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SUVLA BAY 

AND AFTER 



SUVLA BAY 

And after 

By J U FEN IS 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



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DEDICATED 

TO 
A. A. P. 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

It seems to the author that some words of 
apology are necessary for his presumption in 
offering this book to the pubhc. For it is 
not a broad survey of large and important 
operations, only a little personal account of 
the experiences of himself and his platoon, 
and in the second half of himself alone, when 
his platoon was gone. The tale may not be 
sensational, but then it contains no lies. It 
may even be dull, but then it is consecutive. 
It is not humorous, for the author does not 
care to joke with serious things. 

If it helps a soldier, here and there, to 
remember his own campaign, and a civilian 
or two to realise something of a soldier's life 
in war, better than disconnected tales of 
valour and of pathos, the author will feel that 
he was justified. 

The author is indebted to the Editor of 
The English Review for permission to print 
in this volume some of the chapters which 
appeared in its columns. 

, Captain, 



London, 1916. X Division. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I 
The Day before the Landing 1 

CHAPTER II 

The Way to Suvla 7 

CHAPTER III 

The Battle by the Shore 13 

CHAPTER IV 
We Land 23 

CHAPTER V 
At the Back of a Battle 35 

CHAPTER VI 
"Trenches" 45 

CHAPTER VII 
Battle 58 

CHAPTER VIII 
Wounded 70 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



CHAPTER IX 
The Way to Lemnos 80 

CHAPTER X 

Lemnos Hospital 87 

CHAPTER XI 
The Daily Round 99 

CHAPTER XII 
Quiet 119 

CHAPTER XIII 
Our Spirits Rose 135 

CHAPTER XIV 
At Last! 148 



CONCERNING OUR 
UNIFORM 

Ireland watched us as we grew 
Out of " civvies " into " hlue,'^'' 
Out of " blue " into " khaki "— 
Then we sailed across the sea. 

England watched us growing stilly 
Out of " khaki " into " drill,'' 
Winding on the long " pagris " — 

Then we sailed across the seas. 

Mitylene watched us next, 
E'en in " khaki drill " perplexed. 
Every single garment shed 
But the helmets on our head. 



CHAPTER I 

THE DAY BEFORE THE LANDING 

Most of us thought the landlocked harbour, 
since described in Sir Ian Hamilton's dis- 
patch as ''an island base 120 miles from 
Suvla Bay," quite the most beautiful place 
that could possibly exist. There was no 
casino there, it is true, nor any tennis-courts, 
but for sheer beauty it was hard to beat — at 
least, so we thought when first we steamed in 
through the long and narrow entrance, lined 
as it was to the water's edge with olive-groves 
and twinkling farms, rude wooden piers and 
whitewashed villages half hidden in vines and 
figs, pumpkins and pomegranates, and here 
and there a group of olive- skinned inhabi- 
tants in flowing, coloured garments, waving 
their welcome from the shady path and blow- 
ing kisses. But that was many days ago, 
and by now, the 5th of August, we were 
getting rather tired of doing nothing, in a 
transport, far away from sight or sound of 
war ; although, the ship's censor told us, one 
imaginative man wrote home, " The noise is 
awful, with shrapnel bursting all around ! " 



2 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

But, except for that man, most of us were 
bored. The game of " shuffle-board," played 
on a sunny deck, is an excellent one ; but no 
shuffle-board season should be longer than a 
fortnight. Cocktails, especially our patent 
" Gallipolis," are very good indeed ; but, 
when both gin and ice are exhausted, they 
lose a great deal of their charm. Bridge, too, 
and poker — but even a purser will turn. 
Again, one cannot organise " sweeps " on the 
day's run when the ship is at anchor ; and 
regattas, even, pall at last. In the end, I 
remember, we fell back upon the " match, 
hatch and dispatch " column of the only 
newspaper on board, getting up books on the 
date and cause of death, the age of the twins, 
the church of marriage, and the value of the 
will. But this was in the evening. 

The 5th of August was a hot day. All 
August days are hot in landlocked harbours 
off the coast of Asia Minor, but that par- 
ticular day was hotter still. A few big trans- 
ports, a mine-layer or two, allied torpedo 
craft, three cruisers and a battleship were 
standing on a sea of deep-blue glass under a 
fiery sky : all pointing up the gulf towards 
the " Anglo-French " Kafeinon, half hidden in 
the olive trees upon the shore. A cloud of 
dust was creeping slowly round the zigzag 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 3 

harbour road, showing where a battahon was 
keeping fit. The tow of boats that had taken 
them ashore was bubbUng back to rest in the 
shade of their mother's stern. 

The sea was dotted, besides, with all man- 
ner of painted native craft ; some with pink 
decks were rowing-boats, borne down with 
melons, grapes, tomatoes (huge) and many- 
other brightly coloured fruit. These clustered 
round the troopships' sides, where many a 
tanned arm reached out of the " F "-deck 
portholes with an English penny (all coins are 
welcome to the Greek) and sometimes even 
(oh ! tell it not in Whitehall !) with regula- 
tion shirts or khaki — anyhow, the main thing 
was that the arm w^as drawn back into the 
belly of the ship with fruit. 

Other boats there were, big fishing-smacks 
that sailed majestically inshore, looking for 
all the world like the vessels that carried the 
Athenians thither in the classic davs. With 
bright-blue sides, lined with green, red- 
headed snakes, the gay craft glided about. 
Their decks and pits were filled with bronzed 
and naked w^arriors, each with his helmet and 
towel — only these were Irish soldiers, not 
Athenian, bent on bathing rather than on 
revenge. For, let it be here said, that in all 
the world there is no better bathing-place 



4 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

than is the base 120 miles from Suvla Bay. 
We all enjoyed it, officers and men. My own 
bathes were performed in the company of a 
few good friends, including my servant, who 
was of a great bulk and an excellent swimmer, 
so that I could not be drowned. We used to 
set out in the Holy Trinity, the Argo, or the 
Lion, sailed by Greek reservists, who wore 
the Turkish and Bulgarian war medals and 
could not understand a word we said. Then, 
when we had reached a spot where coal-dust 
and yesterday's potato-peel floated no more, 
we would dive in, and soon, with air- collars 
round our necks, pith helmets on our heads, 
and cigarettes between our lips, float lazily 
about, thanking God that we were not for 
Flanders — creeping ignominiously across the 
channel in some mouldy " tramp." 

Such were those days. We thought little 
of the War. We had no letters and no news- 
papers to remind us of it. Indeed, we were 
beginning to believe that this eastern war was 
all a scheme for showing us the charms of the 
Levant — a Kitchener's Continental Tour, a 
reward for patriotic enlistment, with the cen- 
sorship thrown in to keep it from the tax- 
payer. It is true that at night, sometimes, 
before the moon was up, we used to see the 
sky lit up a fiery red to eastward by the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 5 

flames of burning Asia — the whole coast was 
a chain of blazing villages ; but the moon 
soon rose, and then the smoke looked like a 
long cloud-bank, and the warships shone 
most saintly in that landlocked harbour. 

We began to grow angry with that moon. 
As long as the moon was shining of a night 
we could not hope to go to war, whither — for 
few of us had been before — inaction made us 
long to go. 

However, the moon was waning, and when 
I was on watch, from 12 to 4 a.m., on the 
night of the 5th of August, it was dark as a 
night could be. Going the rounds of a large 
troopship in an August Mediterranean night 
is not an exhilarating job ; but it was always 
possible that one of the 2,500 Irishmen on 
board might have dropped a lighted cigarette 
somewhere before he fell asleep — and falling 
asleep is no easy task in such an atmosphere, 
though sentries might find it easier, perhaps. 

It was after my third round, while I was 
on the bridge, reporting the absence of sub- 
marines, fires, and similar dangers, to the 
ship's officer, that the signalling began. The 
harbour fairly danced with dots and dashes ! 
I began to feel quite important as the long 
message came, detail by detail, from the 
general's ship, of the orders for the morrow, 



6 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

for I realised that I was the first on board to 
get the long-expected news. But, alas ! the 
orders were so vague ! — to be ready to trans- 
fer the details of the at 10 a.m. ; to dis- 
embark the at twelve ; to fill all water- 
bottles ; to issue respirators and iron-rations ; 
to take one thing and to leave another ; to do 
this and to do that — whereas all we wanted to 
know was : Where on earth were we going ? 
Smyrna, Thessalonica, Bulair, Anzac, 
Helles, Egypt, Aden, Enos and even India — 
all had their supporters among the * saloon- 
strategists. Even Suvla Bay had been sug- 
gested by one subaltern, but had been 
squashed at once by another, who produced a 
map and pointed to that salubrious spot with 
scorn, underlining with no uncertain finger 
the ominous words " Salt Lake (dry in sum- 
mer) " that stretched across the bay, and 
then, for emphasis, said, '' Have a drink ? " 



CHAPTER II 

THE WAY TO SUVLA 

The 6th of August was a windy day, very 
fine and very hot in the island base 120 
miles from Suvla Ba}^, where the ships that 
were to take us into action came frisking up 
the harbour's mouth hke httle lambs and, 
running alongside the sheep-like transports, 
tied up. 

We all crowded up on deck to inspect our 
new quarters, hanging over the side and 
gazing down upon her decks with that proud 
feeling that those on board the larger of two 
ships invariably experience. Yet it was with 
certain feelings of reverence as well that we 
scanned this ex-cross-Channel steamer in her 
garb of battleship grey. For had she not been 
under fire ? Yes, sure enough, there were 
patches on her squat funnels and bullet-holes 
on her bridge. And what were those dark 
stains upon her decks ? 

But further meditation was cut short by 
orders to fall in — and a most uncomfortable 
parade it was, on the scorching decks, with 
bulging packs and bursting haversacks. 



8 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

innumerable rounds of ammunition, a couple of 
respirators each, blankets and ground- sheets, 
tins of bully-beef, iron- rations, bags of bis- 
cuits and full water-bottles, not to mention 
revolvers, field-glasses, compasses, map-cases, 
writing materials, note-books, mess-tins, and 
such other personal impedimenta as each one 
thought essential for the unnatural life for 
which we were now bound. Let no man 
fresh from France despise the " Christmas- 
tree " equipment that we carried then, re- 
membering that we were going to a spot that 
was innocent of inhabitants, of food, of 
water, of wood, of grass or of straw, of bricks 
or of mortar, houses or shops, shade or 
shelter, road or railway : to a place where 
the elements, summer and winter, would be 
against us ; with little hope of mails from 
home and only the minimum necessary of 
supplies : for our Havre and our Boulogne 
were tiny jetties or the bare beach itself : our 
very drinking-water produced by machinery 
drop by drop, or brought in tins by sea from 
the corners of the Empire. 

So it was with the most elaborate prepara- 
tion and cumbrous equipment, and with the 
most motley collections of battleships and 
cruisers, torpedo-craft and submarines, mine- 
layers and mine-sweepers, lighters and pin- 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 9 

naces, barges and horse-boats, water-ships 
and food-ships, transports and colKers, hospi- 
tal-ships, aeroplanes and balloons, mules and 
horses, donkeys and camels, and armies 
drawn from places as wide apart as the British 
Isles, Australia, Africa, France, India and 
New Zealand, that the expedition to the 
Dardanelles was made — truly the best 
equipped and the most powerful force that 
had ever set out overseas. And think, too, of 
that expedition of long ago, that set out from 
another Empire founded on the mastery of 
the seas — the expedition of the Athenians 
to Syracuse. How alike the expeditions 
were : whether from the view of the enthu- 
siasm with which they were launched, of the 
high hopes of a speedy and glorious consum- 
mation of their objects, or of the thorough- 
ness and splendour of their preparation and 
the magnificence of their equipment. From 
Syracuse, as from Gallipoli, to the capital 
across the seas came back the same demand 
for huge and speedy reinforcements. In 
Athens, as in London, came the sudden read- 
justment of the temper in which the stupen- 
dous difficulties to be overcome were realised, 
and abroad the same hesitation of the neu- 
trals, the same demand for a great and signal 
victory, and the same intrigues : and Syra- 



10 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

cuse turned for help to Sparta as Turkey to 
Berlin. The fortunes of the expeditions, too, 
were much the same — the sickness, the disap- 
pointments and, alas ! the " fatal inertia " in 
the momentous crisis, were the same. Thank 
God we cannot follow, now, the parallel of the 
Athenians to the end. By their miraculous 
evacuation of the so-often-promised land, our 
armies have been spared the final horror of 
the stone-quarries of a Syracuse. Thank 
God we had no Nicias in command when the 
last moments came ! 

This is no place for moralising on the Pride 
of Sea Power, but Pride of Sea Power was 
certainly the feeling that was uppermost, and 
was bound to be uppermost, in us on our way 
from the Motherland to Suvla Bay. We felt 
it as we steamed slowly out of Devonport, 
past the cheering crowds on Plymouth Hoe 
and the long one-noted " Hip ! Hip ! Hoo- 
rahs ! " of the sirens and hooters of the 
crowded and imposing shipping and work- 
shops there. We felt it when the black 
destroyers foamed about us down the English 
Channel, as they had done two months before 
on om: way to Holyhead from Ireland. We 
felt it at Gibraltar and Malta, bristling with 
masts and guns ; at Alexandria's huge and 
crowded quays ; at Mudros Harbour, filled 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 11 

with the ships of freight and ships of war of 
half a dozen nations working with us. We 
felt it when we steamed into action out of 
Mitylene. We felt it under fire at Suvla 
Bay, in the gigantic hospital ships that 
brought so many of us racing into safety 
once again. But most of all were we made 
aware of it by the successful evacuation of 
Gallipoli. 

This digression has left us standing in rows 
upon the decks of the transport, where we had 
spent a month. But we did not stand there 
long. In a very short time our stores, our 
ammunition and ourselves were all aboard 
the smaller ship, scrambling for places in the 
shadows of the life-boats, and flinging down 
our burdensome equipment on the decks. 

The heating moments of transhipment 
being over, we began to " sit up and take 
notice." We watched the other transports 
disgorging their contents ; we explored the 
bowels of our boat for cabins and saloons ; 
we bid innumerable farewells to our late ship's 
officers ; and we gave them and the ship three 
cheers. Those of us who had any money left 
after so long at sea bought up her remaining 
cigarettes, which soon ran out. The less 
fortunate pretended not to want them, but 
their turn soon came. For the quarter- 



12 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

master began opening some mysterious bags 
and cases that he had been keeping in the 
dark, and issued our first official ration of 
cigarettes and tobacco, together with some 
shamrock-covered envelopes containing fur- 
ther cigarettes from " Friends in Ireland." 

And then the crews began to shout, and 
ropes were cast off and engine bells rang and 
the Pipers piped, and off we glided, cheering 
and laughing, from the bigger boat, and soon 
were steaming past the olive groves and 
farms and villages, out of the harbour mouth, 
into the splendid evening sea, dark blue and 
flecked with foam and edged with the copper- 
coloured cliffs of the islands. 

We were one of half a dozen ships in line 
ahead, and when the first turned to the left 
the Landing-in- Asia-Minor Party said, " I 
told you so ! " to the rest. But soon the line 
made a right wheel to the north, and the 
Peninsula Party were finally triumphant. 
As a matter of fact we had been given the 
most elaborate maps of Gallipoli an hour or 
two before, but — " what's in a map ? " Did 
not the General Staff have many maps pre- 
pared of many parts of Europe and Asia too ? 
Even the wily Turk was deceived by such, 
so why not simple subalterns ? 



CHAPTER III 

THE BATTLE BY THE SHORE 

Our search for comfort in the bowels of the 
little ship was not too well rewarded. She 
had not been built for the Mediterranean, and 
still less for the stealthy transport of a bat- 
talion to Gallipoli by night. Every port- 
hole was screwed down and boarded over to 
conceal the lights, and there were no fans 
below. The result was an ill-savoured fur- 
nace. Not knowing when we might be called 
upon to land, we could not afford to strip, 
so to sleep below was out of the question ; 
we poured with sweat, and finished up on the 
closely packed deck. The night fell sud- 
denly, and we slowed down, for fear of reach- 
ing the rendezvous too early. With the fall 
of darkness came the extinction of pipes and 
cigarettes (enemy's submarines are credited 
with powerful sight). On deck the wind was 
cold, the boards were sticky with salt dew, 
and hard. We longed for the dawn. 

Just before dawn, at about three o'clock, 
hot tea was issued to us all, and, stumbling 
down the ladder from the boat-deck, I 

13 



14 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

stepped right into a dixie full of it, which 
some genius had put at the bottom of the 
stairs for safety. However, I found my kit 
and returned, without repeating the horrible 
incident, to join the officers, on the front of 
the boat-deck, who were now peering through 
the darkness to the north-east, over the star- 
board bow, with field glasses. 

Soon we made out some lights, red and 
green, in a row, and quickly two more rows 
like them, moving along with us. They 
were hospital ships. 

We had scarcely realised their cheerful pre- 
sence, when away to the east we saw some 
starry rockets and shells flying and bursting 
high in the sky, and the twinkle of distant 
gunfire. It was quite silent. We did not 
hear the guns, we could not see the ships or 
the shore, though we felt the presence of 
both. 

We rushed on past the distant hint of the 
horrors of a battle in the night, and knew then 
that the grim slopes of Achi Baba were not 
for us, and that we should not land under the 
shadow of the River Clyde at Helles. With 
something of a thrill we understood that our 
fresh Army Corps was destined for fresh 
fields. So on we glided into the cold darkness 
that comes before the dawn. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 15 

Suddenly the light began to grow and the 
outlines of hills and warships became just 
visible. When we had made out one ship 
then we saw them all, as fast as we turned 
our heads, behind us and in front, to right 
and to left, all gliding in towards the shore — 
troopships and warships, silently and relent- 
lessly gliding into the bay. On our right, by 
what we could now distinguish as the cliffs at 
Anzac, many were there already at anchor, 
and now we could hear the guns as well as see 
their sulphurous flashes, on land and sea. 

Then, all at once, a terrible roar broke out 
on the gloomy heights, the roar of rifles and 
machine guns, shrapnel and high explosive : 
it never slackened, it never died ; it seemed 
too loud and too innumerable to last ; yet on 
it went, and grew. " The Australians are 
making a dawn attack," we said to each 
other, " and we shall be too late." Still, we 
glided on among our fellow transports in due 
order into Suvla Bay, and then, swinging 
round as we got into line with Lala Baba and 
Suvla Cape, dropped anchor in the thick of 
them. 

It must have been then that the Turks saw 
the truth. What an awful and unforgettable 
sight we must have been to them — an army 
gliding up irresistible out of the night. 



16 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

backed by the invincible Armadas of Eng- 
land ! Be that as it may, the noise of battle 
away to the east swept round towards us as 
the sun sprang up behind grim Sari Bair, and 
the din of firing to our front and left burst 
out, from Anafarta and the hills round Suvla 
Bay. The new sun showed the water, calm 
and smooth, splashed up by rifle bullets and 
shrapnel and the waterspouts of shells. We 
were told to lie down on deck : some glass on 
the bridge came rattling down among us : 
the fire-hoses were turned on and the decks 
ran with water : a few stray shrapnel bullets 
pattered down on us, and the man next me 
pulled one of them in triumph from his thick 
pith helmet. For the first time since in the 
butts at Aldershot we heard the crack and 
hiss and whine of bullets passing close. 

From our damp and uncomfortable posture 
we watched the transhipment of the troops 
from the transports to the motor-lighters 
that were to take them to the beach — weird 
boats those motor-lighters were, that we now 
recognised as having passed on the high seas, 
straining and lumbering at their hawsers 
behind slow tramps, down the Bay of Bis- 
cay, a month before. They had been just 
too far away to be made out at that time, and 
no one dreamed that one day we should be 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 17 

asked to go in those uncouth, heavy, shape- \ 
less, wave-washed monstrosities, with great 
platforms sticking out in front, to land in 
Suvla Bay. / 

Some were now panting up along the 
transports to our right and left and hurrying 
away with their pale khaki crowd of troops. 
Some were already at the beaches — or as near 
to them as the shallows would allow — errati- 
cally shelled from the hills above. One or 
two had run aground. Others were circling 
about in shore, as though to seek a spot where 
they might rest their keels, weighed down by 
companies of infantry. From early dawn we 
saw these lighters plodding in, and all the 
previous night they had worked on unceas- 
ingly : for days and nights before had they 
taken men and stores to Anzac : their small, 
great-hearted crews were wearied to drop- 
ping : their eyes were dull and bloodshot 
from want of sleep : themselves all black 
with smoke and oil, and stiff with the endless 
loading and unloading stores. And of the 
boats themselves the iron decks were dented 
and scarred and pierced with rifle bullets. 

Meanwhile the transports were all anchored 
in the bay, and a mine-layer steamed across 
behind us, dropping a string of mines that fell 
down bouncing upon the water as she went. 



18 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

The warships crept in closer and let fly their 
heavy broadsides, from half a dozen guns at 
once, against the Turkish batteries. 

Soon after this the Turkish small arms fire 
died down, and we stood up again to watch 
the progress of the battle in the bay. 

All at once I noticed a tiny speck wheeling 
high up in the sky. At first I thought it was 
a monoplane, but its movements soon showed 
that it was a bird, a big bird, hovering over 
us. Immediately I thought of the eagle that 
Agamemnon, lord of the hosts of Greece, 
had seen not far from this same spot when he 
set foot upon the windy plains of Troy 
thousands of years ago. I tried to remember 
the details of the story, but my knowledge of 
the Classics seemed to have melted away. All 
I could remember was that the omen was 
good, so I told the rest about it ; but they 
laughed and said the bird above us was only a 
vulture. Be that as it may, there was no 
mistaking the next thing we saw in the air. 
It was an aeroplane, close above us, making a 
great noise. 

" One of our ' spotters,' I suppose," we 
said, and raised our field glasses. But no, 
two iron crosses stretched across her slanting 
wings, and we had hardly time to realise on 
which side she was when bombs came 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 19 

dropping down. Four were intended for our 
boat, and indeed came close enough, one of 
them sending sheets of water across our 
stern. But the shrapnel from the Fleet was 
bursting round her now, with little puffs of 
pure white smoke, clean and fairy-like against 
the dark blue of the sky, and soon the Taube 
flew off towards the east. 

Just then the transport next us was holed 
by a shell in the water-line and began to take 
a heavy list to starboard. Fortunately, the 
troops had all been taken off ; so, weighing 
anchor, she steamed slowly away, and we lost 
sight of her in the excitement of gazing at the 
battle that spread for miles before our eyes 
on Suvla Bay. 

To the left, looking east, was Suvla Cape, 
and Lala Baba promontory to our right, with 
Anzac rising up beyond it. Before us spread 
the valley behind the bay, running back in a 
huge flat crescent to the ring of hills that 
stretched unbroken all around, their two 
great arms running down to the sea at Suvla 
Cape and Anzac. Between Lala Baba and 
Suvla lay the great Salt Lake, gleaming 
white and dry in the fierce sun, and separated 
from the sea by a narrow spit of sand. 

The troops we could see best were landing 
under Lala Baba, lighter-load after lighter- 

B2 



20 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

load, and the shrapnel was bursting freely 
over them. We saw the lighters creeping 
slowly in under the low cliffs and after a little 
pause long lines of men coming up at the 
double over the top and moving across an 
open patch to disappear again into the scrub. 
We could just distinguish their separate 
forms through field glasses. Hundreds and 
hundreds were passing, line after line, and 
working over to the left and front, towards a 
little isolated hillock. Then, after a pause, 
we saw the twinkling glitter of countless 
bayonets speeding through the bush. The 
shrapnel clouds grew more continuous, the 
crackle of rifle fire grew louder, the lines 
rushed on : figures now and then were visible 
for a moment against the scars of sand, and 
almost at once we could see other lines spring 
up with gleaming bayonets and flee into the 
scrub and disappear. The hill was carried. 
We had seen the fight as through a glass, 
darkly. The bravery of the troops we could 
not see, but the white puffs of bursting 
shrapnel, the rattle of rifle fire and the glitter 
of the steadily advancing bayonets were 
eloquent enough. 

Such scenes were being enacted every- 
where along the line ; and, though individual 
valour was invisible half a mile away, yet we 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 21 

could judge the temper of the troops from the 
sheen of the Hnes of naked bayonets. Their 
steadiness under fire was clear, from the un- 
faltering progress of those long, thin lines of 
dots upon the gleaming white of the Salt Lake 
and the sand. Had we been nearer we should 
have seen the surface of the dried-up lake 
alive and dancing with the salt cast up by- 
streams of bullets ; as it was we could only- 
see the shell-bursts overhead. 

We longed to be on shore. If other units of 
the New Army could behave like that, there 
would be no holding us \ Indeed, no finer or 
more inspiring spectacle could have been set 
before the eyes of troops about to land. Too 
far away to see the casualties as horrible, we 
could think only of the advancing line of 
bayonets. We longed to be on shore 1 Mean- 
while a battery of field artillery was gallop- 
ing up to the fresh-gained hill, without an 
instant's delay— and it was welcome. But 
the Turks had batteries too. 

On the right of our transport, within 
hailing distance, was a cruiser belching broad- 
sides at the hills by Suvla Cape. The din 
was terrific, and the very w^ater seemed 
quivering and aflame with the blast of her 
guns. Huge mauve and yellow spurts of 
smoke and sand burst up, six at a time, where 



22 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

the shells went home. They were searching 
for a Turkish battery hidden in the scrub. 
Salvo after salvo did she fire, and at last the 
battery ceased firing. We could find no trace 
of it next day. 

All round it was the same. Directed by 
the signals of a spotting balloon, and by 
innumerable flags and cones and semaphores, 
cruisers, monitors and torpedo-boat de- 
stroyers were bombarding heavily. The hills 
all round the bay were crowned with the 
heavy, golden clouds of smoke from the naval 
shells, together with the white puffs of the 
answering Turkish guns, while in the plain 
between them the rifles and machine guns 
rattled and the bayonets gleamed. 

Men were now landing right, left, and in 
front. Horse-boats loaded with mules and 
guns, and motor-lighters packed with in- 
fantry, were swarming in. Surely our turn 
must have come by now ? Who was the 
idiot that was keeping the finest regiment in 
the bay so long inactive ? 



CHAPTER IV 

WE LAND 

At last, at about four o'clock in the after- 
noon, when we had been watching the battle 
spread out in a panorama before us for twelve 
hours, the lighters came alongside for us, 
and took off " A," " B " and " C " companies. 
I was in " D," so had to be content with 
watching for a little longer. At any rate, a 
personal interest was now added to the view ; 
and the lighters would soon be back. 

The three companies lost no time in getting 
aboard, and soon were making for the shore 
at Suvla Cape (" A " Beach), where already 
several other lighters were tied up dis- 
embarking troops. But suddenly a little 
hitch arose. One of the lighters seemed to 
be aground. The water there was shallow 
and strewn with rocks ; and, worse than 
that, as the troops just landed were re- 
forming on the beach, a terrific explosion 
took place there. Huge yellow bursts of 
smoke rose up. Through our glasses we 
could plainly see the men near by it. They 
seemed to lean inwards towards the centre 

123 



24 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

of the burst, and then were flung this way 
and that ; some to He still and some to 
disappear. Almost immediately several more 
explosions in rapid succession rent the air, 
and for some moments we lost sight of the 
troops altogether in the clouds of smoke and 
sand. The Turks must be tossing down 
gigantic shells from the Anafarta hills ; or 
perhaps from Asia across the coveted nar- 
rows ! What marvellous shooting ! They 
must have taken the range to a yard, for 
they certainly could not see the little beach. 
But someone told us that they were not 
shells, but land mines, set off by being 
trodden on. I was thankful our battalion 
was still safe upon the sea. 

The time wore on apace, and the lighters 
were still hovering off the beach, when a 
thunderstorm broke out, together with a 
wind that lashed the sea from a dead calm 
into foam-crested waves. It lasted nearly 
an hour and all was calm again. 

The storm seemed to have changed the 
colour of the whole scene. Light khaki drill 
was a dull brown, the scrub was greener, the 
flashes from the guns a lemoner yellow, as 
the sun dived down behind us into the sea 
by Samothrace, and the first three companies 
of our battalion jumped on shore. We had 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 25 

just time to see them forming up and moving 
off when darkness fell. The warships kept 
up the cannonade, and once more, as in the 
early morning, we saw the twinkle of guns 
on distant heights. 

It was midnight when a lighter came 
panting up at last to take us off together 
with the stores. The stores were put on 
first — boxes of ammunition, cases of rations 
and lime-juice, and many dixies. Lastly, we 
ourselves jumped on and crowded down into 
the lighter's belly. 

The engine started, shaking us like an 
ancient motor-bus, and off we went. There 
were no lights on board and no lights on the 
beach, and the journey, though very short — 
perhaps six hundred yards — took a long time. 
The skipper of our new craft was almost 
drunk with weariness. He could scarcely 
stand on his feet and hardly see or hear, 
and was extremely irritable. He tried to 
lose his temper with his junior on the look- 
out for'ard, but was too tired to raise his 
voice sufficiently to swear. I have never 
seen a man so overworked and utterly 
exhausted. His uniform and face and hands 
were black with oil and grime. He began 
to munch a thick and oily sandwich list- 
lessly. 



26 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

At length, about 2 a.m., we got on shore. 
There were many forms around us sleeping 
huddled up in the sand and in the low scrub 
beyond it, jumbled anyhow. We found an 
empty patch, and there the company 
gathered and tumbled down and fell asleep. 
I went a few yards off them and lay down. 
There were others lying near me in the scrub. 
Many were groaning in their sleep. 

After an hour or two I woke, and, with the 
company commander and my fellow-sub- 
alterns, roused up the men. We found — for 
the light was faintly rising now — that we had 
been sleeping among the wounded of another 
regiment. They were lying there in the 
sand, for the most part, though some were 
under a large tarpaulin, propped up at the 
corners on sticks. It was a hospital — or 
rather a clearing station, I suppose. 

A few yards off two nameless wooden 
crosses stood over a fresh grave. A man 
was standing looking at them. " I suppose 
they like it, sir," he said, turning towards 
me for a moment, and then strolled away. 

When the men were fallen in we moved 
up along a rough track through the scrub 
inland. On our right, over a little mound, 
was the dry salt lake, on our left a long 
ridge rising to about six hundred feet, 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 27 

running inland. A succession of spurs 
stretched from it to the plain. The other 
side of it and behind us was the sea. 

We had so far found no trace or word of 
the battalion, but we had not gone far when 
we met the quartermaster, by a pile of packs. 
So there we stopped to take our packs off 
and to add them to the pile. We were told 
the regiment had gone on. So on we went 
to find it. A long spur running down 
from the left was hiding us from the enemy. 
When we came up to it at length we halted 
in the gully and got out our bully-beef and 
biscuits, while scouts went on for news. 

It was a cheerful little gully, in the bright 
sun, with a dried-up watercourse running 
through it, overhung with quite large little 
shrubs. Some of these were covered with 
pale flowers that looked like our wild roses, 
but which turned out to be all of one piece, 
petals and centre, made of a leathery sub- 
stance, darkening into brown at the centre 
and pink at the edges. Another kind was 
like huge scentless purple mignonette. The 
ground was covered besides with minute- 
leafed wild thyme, that smelt delicious as 
we trampled it, and withered veitch. This 
thyme grew crawling over the sand in patches 
all over Suvla Bay ; and whenever the Turks, 



28 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

alive or dead, began to pollute the air too 
potently we could generally find some slight 
relief in gathering thyme and crushing it 
between our fingers under our offended noses. 
While we were waiting for the scouts' return, 
when we had breakfasted off the bully-beef 
and biscuits, and the men were scratching 
vainly about for water in the dried-up water- 
course, we sat in the bush on the spur of the 
hill and contemplated the scene. 

The sun was already very hot, and we 
looked with envy out to sea, across the salt 
lake, at the many-coloured fleet of trans- 
ports and warships (they were at it with their 
guns again). They looked so cool and com- 
fortable on the calm blue sea. Below us 
gleamed the salt lake, covered occasionally 
by a line of dots, and once by some stampeding 
mules. Troops were still landing here and 
there along the beach beyond. To our right 
front, a mile or so away, we could see a 
brigade massed under cover of a low hill in 
the centre of the plain, as though about to 
debouch for an attack. Our actual lines (if 
they existed) across the plain were invisible 
owing to the bushy scrub. 

The other side of the plain, to the east, 
the naval shells were bursting on the hills 
and over Anafarta town. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 29 

Nowhere could we see any traces of our 
regiment, and when the scouts returned, 
reporting nothing but Turkish snipers in the 
scrub directly ahead and no signs of our 
men to the right, we went up with the com- 
pany through the gully to the left, and 
found at length the remnants of the battalion 
among whose casualties we had slept the 
night before. They had been relieved and 
were resting. They begged for water, but 
we were short ourselves — just one water- 
bottleful each had been given us on the 
transport. A little had been used already 
on board and at breakfast this morning, 
and there was little doubt that many of the 
water-bottles were nearly empty, and chances 
of refilling in the future were a trifle vague. 
A fully equipped soldier in such a climate is 
a thirsty man. 

We left them, following the gully to the 
top of the ridge, where I chanced upon a 
rifle whose number-plate bore the regi- 
mental stamp. This set us on our way up 
over the hill and along the path that ran 
just under the ridge-line itself, on the other 
side of the ridge. We were now moving 
along a tiny track, rough and dusty and 
strewn with boulders, parallel to the sea, 
that lay some five or six hundred feet 



30 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

below us, about three-quarters of a mile 
downhill. 

We had not gone far when we met a 
kindly general, who bade us keep straight 
on and look out for snipers ; and after about 
a mile we found the battalion at last, behind 
a little peak rising above the rest of the 
ridge. It was the front of our position, 
and the relics of yesterday's battle lay 
strewn about and were being collected — 
equipment, ammunition, clothing, casualties 
and chunks of shells. 

Every now and then the almost imper- 
ceptible breeze carried with it a whiff of 
carrion from our front ; and snipers' bullets 
sighed past fitfully. 

Two of our companies were extended 
thinly down to the sea, from battalion head- 
quarters on the crest, which the third com- 
pany was holding, together with the machine 
guns, protected by a few sandbags and rocks. 
The ground was so difficult as to make a 
decent trench an impossible dream. My 
own company lay in reserve along the ridge, 
trying to put up a little cover and a little 
shelter from the burning sun ; but the latter 
they could not achieve. 

I sat with the " flag-waggers " and " buzz- 
ers " behind a little sandbag spur, and, in 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 31 

the intervals of his buzzing and wagging, 
talked to the signal officer. 

The ridge that we were on hid Suvla Bay 
and the Fleet. Only one ship could we see — 
a destroyer anchored almost at our feet. 
The water was calm and clear. We could 
see the bottom for hundreds of yards away 
from the shore, and make out the wicked- 
looking Kishlar Rocks, sticking right up like 
trees from the sea-floor to the surface, where 
a thin line of foam showed them just awash. 
We longed for a bathe. 

With field glasses we could just distin- 
guish the men on the destroyer's bridge, 
who would now and then call us up, with 
their flags, to signal news. The only news 
message I can remember being sent that 
day was the report of the sinking of a 
Turkish battleship that morning in the Sea 
of Marmora : a report which I later saw 
confirmed in the Times at a Lemnos hospital. 
For news from the Fleet had to be taken 
with a pinch of salt sometimes — e.g,, " Botha 
landed at Krithia yesterday with 50,000 
Boers," or " Zeppelin raid on London : 
80,000 casualties " ; besides innumerable 
''The Narrows forced" and " Achi Baba 
fallen." 

After a while an officer of the Royal 



32 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Naval Division came along and stopped 
with us for a chat. He was hot and dusty 
from looking for two signallers who had been 
missing for some time, and whom, I believe, 
he never found. His division had a machine 
gun party on the ridge that used to make 
most admirable practice on the local Turks. 

We began to be anxious to move on, as 
the day grew older and hotter and little 
seemed to be happening in our immediate 
front, though there was always the noise 
of firing on our right in the valley. 

Of water there was no news, but rumours 
trickled through of a little far off on the 
beach a mile or two away — a place, report 
said, where one had to wait for hours for a 
turn ; where many water-bottles disappeared ; 
where many brawls occurred ; where men 
were mad. 

The day wore slowly on. Here and there 
a sniper's bullet found its mark, and two 
sweating men would bear a stretcher back 
along the ragged little path. 

Near midday we tried to have dinner, but 
we could muster little appetite. The bully- 
beef was so very salt, and we could spare no 
water to soak out the salt ; so that eating 
made us thirstier. 

In the afternoon I was told to send my 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 33 

platoon back to the beach with the water- 
bottles of all the company and try to get 
them filled. So off they went. 

They had not been long gone, when orders 
came for my company and another to return 
to brigade headquarters as a guard at dusk. 
Dusk came at length, and still my platoon 
had not come back from watering. The 
companies went off without them, and I 
remained to bring them on behind. 

At last, when it was quite dark, the 
platoon came straggling back among the 
scrub and boulders. The path was quite 
invisible. The men were tired. They had 
had a struggle for the water and a long, hot 
climb. 

We picked up our equipment and moved 
off along the hill to find brigade head- 
quarters. It was rather like looking for 
plovers' eggs on a moor on a dark night, but 
after a weary scramble I was assisted by a 
sentry who had a shot at me, missing both 
me and the platoon ; so I knew we were 
there at last. We were led down to the 
left past the headquarters, which appeared 
to consist of a head or two sticking up out 
of the earth, to the side of a hill where the 
rest of the company were sleeping, and told 
to follow their example. But it was no easy 



34 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

task. The spent bullets from some action 
in the distance kept whistling down among 
us ; yet no one seemed to be getting hit, 
and at length we fell asleep. Blankets and 
ground-sheets had not yet come up (we had 
piled them on the beach), but a respirator 
in its bag, inflated with a few biscuits, is an 
excellent pillow for a tired man. 



CHAPTER V 

AT THE BACK OF A BATTLE 

We were up before dawn and filed down into 
a trench that had been dug by the R.E. the 
day before, and ran along a big spur under 
the ridge ; and then we realised once more 
that while the part of the ridge between the 
crest and the sea, as well as the crest itself, 
was in our hands, the ground to the right of 
it was No Man's Land. So that our line at 
Suvla Bay on the left flank resembled the 
letter Z. This particular morning we were in 
a trench along the lower arm of this Z. 

When dawn, with its special danger, was 
past, we moved ahead again with only un- 
aimed rifle fire upon us, into a little gully, 
where we were told to wait in reserve for an 
attack that was proceeding to our front. 
This was on the right of the big ridge and 
below it. 

Those hours of waiting were none too plea- 
sant. Unceasingly the bullets whistled over 
us. But as long as we did not crawl up over 
the spur's edge we were quite safe. Only 
one or two were wounded, and they were men 

35 c2 



36 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

who had been carrying cases of iron-rations 
up, over the rising ground behind us where 
we had left the trench. 

The sun was blazing away at its hottest, 
and there was little shade — only as much as 
there is in the heather on a moor. Our 
heather was the tiniest oaks imaginable, 
with big green acorns and little leaves like 
baby holly, too prickly to sit on. 

The water-bottles, brought back the night 
before, had been only half filled, and little or 
none was left of the water now. The men 
were thirstier than ever. Expecting every 
moment to go into action, we could not send 
a party off to fight for water. We set a guard 
on the path to the beach, and lay and baked. 
I was unpatriotic enough to think of Lager 
beer. 

A party of stretcher-bearers took up their 
position near us, w^aiting for the action to 
subside. 

Now and then, above us, the bush would 
rustle and a man dripping with blood crawl 
through, a great relief spreading over his grey 
face at the sight of the Red Cross brassards. 
Wonderfully enough, from among our thirsty 
men there was always one or another who 
came out to offer his water-bottle to the 
wounded. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 37 

From time to time, besides the wounded, a 
man, beside himself with thirst, his hps all 
black and caked, would stumble past us. 
Once, indeed, one of our own men rose up 
with rifle and bayonet and tried to wrest a 
comrade's water-bottle away, that had be- 
trayed itself by an unmistakable gurgle. He 
was seized and disarmed before any harm 
was done. 

We could not shoot a madman. Someone 
gave him a mouthful of water, and he was 
placed under arrest. We settled down again 
in the sun. Soon afterwards a dirty slip of 
paper was brought up to the captain by a 
N.C.O. It was a note from the arrested 
man, begging to be sent at once upon any 
dangerous job that might assist the company. 
The note was very sincere. The man was 
told to dig a latrine, and then released. 

It was about this time that the ravages 
of dysentery first became apparent, some of 
the men being too weak to stand. 

Late in the afternoon a strange procession 
was seen advancing up the valley towards us 
— a dozen mules, each with two water-skins ! 
'But, alas ! the water was not for us. It was 
for the troops who had been fighting to our 
front. Poor devils ! they needed it. We 
could guess something of their need by the 



38 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

condition of the half-mad creatures who 
came back out of the action. I heard after- 
wards that some had died of that need. Any- 
how, we were allowed four biscuit tins, 
nearly half-full of water, for the company. 

With the approach of night the battle 
ended, and we were told to climb the hill 
once more and go back to the battalion where 
we had left it the previous evening on a crest 
of the ridge, reporting at brigade head- 
quarters on the way. 

So we set off once more, in single file, up the 
steep winding path in the dark, and came at 
length to headquarters. There we were told 
that the battalion was in a farther advanced 
position along the ridge, and that we were to 
go out to their left, to carry down the line as 
far as the sea. Meanwhile, we could have 
some water if we left a party behind with the 
water-bottles. By some misfortune it fell to 
the lot of my platoon to stay for the water, 
while the rest of the company filed off into the 
dark. 

Bullets from snipers kept us lying down, 
and the process of filling the two hundred odd 
water-bottles was a slow one. Apparently, 
though in the dark it was not possible to be 
sure, mules had brought up the water from 
the beach in skins, and these had been 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 39 

emptied into tanks. After a while the bot- 
tles were all filled, and off we went. But 
unfortunately in the hurry and confusion 
of the darkness many of the corks had been 
mislaid, and many water-bottles unavoid- 
ably changed by the official fillers at head- 
quarters ; some were even lost, taken away by 
some straggler's eager hand that found its way 
there in the blackness of the night. Bullets, 
fatigue and dysentery are apt to make men 
careless of trifles. 

Our progress to the place rather vaguely ap- 
pointed was very slow and difficult. It is hard 
to calculate distances in complete darkness 
over uneven ground. 

The little path, near the crest, was too 
dangerous to use, owing to snipers, who, 
lying concealed by day, with stores of food 
and ammunition, among the thick bushes 
and boulders in the wilderness between the 
hill-top and the sea, crept out at night to 
watch for a shot against the sky-line. 

Now and then, as we went farther on, a 
sentry would challenge us, or, nearer the 
front, have a bad shot at us. But they 
never seemed to know where our battalion 
was. At length, however, after several hours 
of scrambling, we ran into a man who had 
been sent us by the company to lead us in, 



40 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

and who eventually helped us to find it. By- 
good luck we all arrived without any bones 
broken by our tumbles among the boulders, 
and, as there was no room for the platoon in 
the line the company was holding, we posted 
a sentry, collected the water-bottles, and, 
getting into a little hollow, went to sleep. 

Just before dawn I took a little stroll, by 
way of having a look round our new quarters, 
and was surprised on my return to feel the 
prick of a bayonet. It was one of my own 
men who had been indulging a similar 
curiosity and hoped he had captured a 
sniper. My language aroused the platoon, 
who stood to arms. 

When the sun came up we began a stormy 
sorting of the water-bottles. Alas ! there 
were not enough to go round all four 
platoons, and some of the ones that were 
present were almost empty. I myself was 
rather surprised to see any left at all, in 
view of the hurried manner of their filling 
at headquarters and the endless, unholy 
scramble we had had to bring them back 
in the dark across the wilderness. There 
were those, however, of my fellow- subalterns 
who were reluctant to share my opinion on 
the subject. Anyhow, we agreed to divide 
the remaining bottles equally among the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 41 

platoons and never to get water in the same 
way again. But this arrangement meant, 
of course, that some men had water while 
others had none. For my own platoon it 
seemed best to pool all the water in some 
large empty biscuit tins, buried in the earth 
for coolness' sake, in the neighbourhood of 
my so-called dug-out, and to divide it among 
the men at certain definite periods of the 
day. Thus a compulsory economy of water 
was inflicted upon the very thirsty that must 
have been extremely irritating. On the 
other hand, they could be more sure of 
having a little left to mitigate their thirst 
at an advanced period of the day. The 
water-bottles were to be stacked at the 
same place, to be regarded as the property 
of the community and not of individuals, 
and to be filled by a fatigue party whenever 
opportunity was presented to replenish the 
biscuit tins. Meanwhile any derelict water- 
bottles, of casualties or fools, that might be 
found lying about were to be deposited there 
too ; then, when there were enough bottles 
to go round, and the habit of husbanding 
the water had been instilled, they would 
again become the property of the individuals ; 
which is what eventually happened. These 
details are dull and childish to read now 



42 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

but were at the time a matter of life and 
death. 

As remarked before, there was no room 
in the front hne for my platoon, so we went 
in reserve into a tiny gully a hundred yards 
behind, scooping out shelters in the side of 
the gully. The nature of the ground and 
the absence of proper digging implements 
(we had " entrenching tools," of course, on 
our equipment) made trenches and dug-outs 
impossible. The soil was a light shale and 
sand that split and crumbled indefinitely, 
leaving a jagged surface most uncomfortable 
to the recumbent figure. As yet there were 
no sticks for props, nor any tin nor planks, 
shovels or picks. Still, there were several 
stones for parapets and walls, and after a 
while we were fairly sniper-proof. 

There appeared to be a Turkish trench 
along a spur, running down to the sea, 
parallel to our own, a little farther along the 
ridge we occupied. But the scrub was very 
thick just there and I could not see. It may 
have been merely a line of snipers : pre- 
sumably the rest of the company, in the 
front trench, knew all about it. 

In the sea below us, on our immediate 
left (my company was about half-way be- 
tween the sea and the summit of the ridge, 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 43 

and had a company on either side of it), lay 
a torpedo-boat destroyer. I have never felt 
so great an affection for a boat as I did then 
for that one. She used to signal news to 
us (and rumours) ; she signalled warnings 
of the doings of the Turks in our immediate 
front, and at the slightest hint she would 
steam slowly round, show her back teeth to 
the Turks, and let off a few rounds at various 
snipers' strongholds on the hill. But she 
had even more sterling qualities than this. 
All night long she fixed her searchlights on 
the ground between us and the Turks, whom 
she shelled devotedly at any sign of restless- 
ness on their part. Last, but not least, she 
gave us water to drink, for the whole battalion, 
rowing it ashore in a little boat and pumping 
it thence into a sail-bath on the beach ; so 
that, though we were still parched with thirst, 
this gift staved off disaster ; and when the 
men went down to the beach to carry it up 
to us there was usually a cigarette, a pipeful 
of tobacco, once even an old newspaper, to 
be had from one or other of the sailors. The 
only newspaper that I saw in Gallipoli con- 
tained an account of the Welsh coal strike — 
" 100,000 Men Idle " ran across the top of 
the leading page ! Many of my men were 
coal miners themselves, and it was lucky for 



44 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

that idle 100,000 that many thousand miles J 
of water (salt, alas ! not drinkable) separated ' 
them. I wondered what would happen when 
they met again — those that were left of 
them. 






CHAPTER VI 



" TRENCHES " 



The first day in these amateur trenches 
seemed even hotter than usual. Perhaps 
this was due to the complete absence of 
shade. In the morning a party was sent back 
for our rations. It was a very long and rough 
way that they had to go in the burning heat. 
The path was hardly worthy of the name, and 
the expedition was a long time on the way. 

The rations had to be carried on the men's 
backs in large packing-cases, and it seemed a 
pity that a nation which produces khaki 
Bibles did not subdue the glaring white of 
these boxes with the same forethought. 

On this particular day, however, none of 
the ration-carriers was hit, though when 
at last they came staggering down with them 
at midday some of them doubtless wished 
they had been. I remember one poor fellow 
falling down unconscious by my dug-out. He 
could not swallow any water that might have 
revived him, the inside of his mouth and 
throat being too swollen to admit a drop, but 
after sundry operations with broken ration 

45 



46 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

biscuits there was just room enough to coax a 
httle water down, and after a while he came 
to. The rest of the party were almost as bad. 
I believe it was due to our inability to eat 
enough of the salt beef to keep really strong. 

The parties who went down to the nearer 
beach on our immediate left were better off. 
They could wallow in drinking water from the 
sail-bath and have a delicious bathe in the 
sea, besides the chance of a cigarette. Un- 
fortunately, the size of these parties had to 
be strictly limited, and it was some days 
before we all could get a bathe. Another 
drawback was that one was liable to be hit 
by a sniper while bathing, though, consider- 
ing the number of men who did bathe and the 
good it did them, such casualties were rare 
enough to be negligible. 

On the evening of this day someone 
dropped an ash in the scrub. In half a 
second yards of scrub were alight, tearing 
headlong up the hill among the stunted oak 
and veitch. Luckily we managed to put out 
the fire by emptying sandbags broadcast 
in its path ; otherwise in a few minutes our 
whole position would have been most uncom- 
fortable, and we should have been left half- 
burnt, without a vestige of cover to conceal 
our movements from the hidden Turks. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 47 

I retired, with grimy hands and smarting 
eyes, to my dug-out, to meditate upon the 
strange mutabihty of human affairs, wherein 
the course of a campaign may be altered by 
the dropping of an ash. 

And the thought of ashes carried my mind 
by a simple transition to smoking. I had 
got two little tins of ship's tobacco, but my 
pipe I had left in England. Who does not 
know the annoyance of visiting a friend after 
dinner of a summer evening, and finding that 
he has forgotten to bring his pipe ? Let him 
imagine what it was like sitting on a ridge in 
Gallipoli, watching the sun go down into a 
crimson sea, when the heat of the day is 
passing and the mosquitoes are abroad — 
without a pipe ! On this particular day I 
felt the loss so keenly that I manufactured a 
pipe out of a branch of a local shrub — a 
kind of Portuguese laurel with a rosy, coral- 
coloured bark, using a roll of paper for the 
stem. It was a great success, when smoked 
upside down to improve the draught ; indeed, 
it tasted so swxet that I resolved, after the 
war, to buy a few acres of that ridge in Suvia 
and, setting up a pipe factory, to make my 
fortune. I went to rest content. 

Next day was much the same, except that I 
went down to the beach and had a bathe. 



48 SUVLA Bx\Y AND AFTER 

The pleasure of taking off one's clothes for the 
first time for seven days was enormous ; but 
the delight of the bathe itself quite inde- 
scribable. I swam a great deal underwater, 
being perhaps a trifle over-timorous of the 
wily snipers on the cliff. 

The climb up from the beach made me 
almost as hot as before I had bathed, and I 
was puffing and blowing when I reached the 
company commander's lair, where we were 
to meet for tea. It could not rightly be 
called a dug-out, funk-hole, or anything but 
a lair. He had chosen a place where several 
bushes, larger than the rest, grew together by 
the side of a little dried-up watercourse. The 
bushes were of the species of Portuguese 
laurel out of which I had made my pipe, and 
among these did our company commander 
make his lair, preferring cover from sun to 
cover from fire. 

That afternoon, as he crawled out from 
among the shady bushes on all fours, with a 
reddish bristly beard (water was far too 
scarce to waste by shaving), to greet his sub- 
alterns, he looked like some forest denizen 
being discovered by a party of explorers. 

There was just room for us to creep inside 
the lair, and we discussed a tin of sardines 
that had cropped up miraculously from 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 49 

headquarters, some jam and many ration 
biscuits, also tea. 

Our company commander's pleasure at 
this sumptuous meal was somewhat marred 
by a brooding terror, that made him announce 
at last that he would have to leave his dug- 
out. By way of explanation he pointed to 
the floor in the corner. There, in about nine 
pieces, lay the remains of a scaly vermilion 
monster, which he described as having been, 
when alive, a huge and ferocious centipede, 
with which he had been battling since mid- 
day. The thought of our gallant captain's 
lonely and terrible struggle with this horrible 
creature reduced us all to a state of speech- 
lessness. 

That evening I was sent with the platoon 
to battalion headquarters, on the crest of 
the ridge, to support the machine gun sec- 
tion. The gun itself was in a sandbag 
emplacement, where there had been a few 
casualties from the snipers, who were very 
active on the other side of the ridge. We had 
to be on the sky-line, along the razor-like 
edge of the hill that dropped down steeply 
on each side. The ground was too rocky for 
trenches, so we lay behind a line of stones and 
boulders on the edge of the ridge at night, 
with bayonets fixed, the sentries being 



50 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

obliged to lie down for once, owing to our 
peculiar position. The idea was, in case of 
an attack, to charge down, without shooting, 
at the advancing enemy. 

When darkness came I lay looking over the 
edge of the hill, with my head between two 
stones, into the valley and over the plain and 
the salt lake to the hills beyond. I was 
facing about south, but a little to the east. 

It w^as a remarkable scene. Once more 
could I see the sulphurous flashes of the war- 
ships' guns, and hear the roll of musketry fire, 
rising out of the gloom from the plain five or 
six hundred feet below. In the centre of the 
plain there was a blaze of light. Three 
enormous fires were raging in the bush a mile 
or two away, over the ground where our 
troops had advanced. Huge semicircles of 
flame were creeping down the valley towards 
the sea. Fortunately, they were too far away 
to let us hear the cries of the wounded they 
were swallowing alive, and it was not for a 
day or two that I heard the details of the 
tragedy. 

There was a certain gloomy vastness, a 
certain remoteness, about the scene spread- 
ing out below me all that night. The sights 
and sounds of battle were faint and confused, 
but I knew that beneath my eyes, between 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 51 

the crest on which I lay and the dim crest, 
where shells were bursting, away to the 
south-east, two armies were contending for 
the mastery of the Dardanelles — two armies 
of which both were in all probability in the 
last stages of exhaustion, and fighting on to 
a standstill. Every conceivable form of 
valour and endurance, death and mutilation, 
was existing at that moment down beneath. 
And yet it seemed to me as remote as if I had 
been Zeus, reclining on Olympus, and watch- 
ing the Greeks and Trojans battling on the 
plains of Troy. 

Suddenly I heard a slight noise on the 
boulder to my right, where I had put a dozen 
of those little round ration biscuits to nibble 
in the night. I could see them faintly 
gleaming in the darkness. To my surprise 
there were only half a dozen left. I lay and 
watched. After a few seconds there was a 
little rustle and a small animal appeared, 
dark and furry, on the boulder, standing out 
against the sky. It seized a biscuit in its 
front paws, looked round, and leapt away. 
It was like a miniature kangaroo. I think it 
was a jerboa. 

The expected attack did not take place 

that night. Expected attacks never do. 

Next day water was scarce, but we were 

d2 



52 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

getting more used to privation. But, if my 
own platoon was hard up in this respect, the 
platoon on my immediate left was in a worse 
plight still. It was pathetic to see its sub- 
altern doling out his supply to his men for 
their breakfast. He was measuring it out in 
an iron ration tin — a third of the tinful for 
each man, amounting, I suppose, to about 
three and a-half tablespoonfuls. A tin was 
being held to catch the drops that fell as the 
water was poured from one tin into the other. 
Later on in the day, however, we got a little 
from the beach, which was now twice as far 
away, and a little red and green water was 
sent up from headquarters, with orders to 
boil before drinking. I believe this precau- 
tion saved us a lot of dysentery, though it was 
on that day that I began to feel prostrated 
with dysentery myself. 

The day lacked interest. We felt very use- 
less and unenterprising where we were. We 
heard that in the plain our line had been 
compelled to withdraw a little way. Appa- 
rently the great bush fires had something to 
do with it. 

We had a few more casualties from snipers, 
and the adjutant got a gash from a rifle bullet 
in the forehead, but this did not prevent him 
being as busy as ever. He seemed to do 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 53 

everybody's work, yet never to interfere with 
anyone. 

After another day and night in this position 
we heard we were to be reheved. I was very 
glad, for dysentery and wakefulness were 
making me feel tired. I rejoined the com- 
pany with my platoon, and eventually we 
were relieved by the remains of two battalions 
that had seen hard fighting in the plain. It 
was in the compan}^ of these regiments that 
I had spent the voyage eastward, and I looked 
out for friends among the long line of men 
that filed past us along the path. They were 
all gone but one. 

We found that our withdrawal from this 
advanced position was only for a few hundred 
yards, where we relieved another battalion 
" entrenched " along the top of the same 
ridge a little farther back. Here we spent a 
long time in burying their bully-beef tins and 
other refuse, and in advancing their line of 
defence, so that we could see over, and hold, 
the actual crest of the ridge. At this point a 
few picks and shovels came along, and, with 
the help of these and a few loose stones, we 
made a fair barricade along the razor-edge. 
But rumours of a coming bombardment, 
accentuated by the presence of a couple of 
Taube aeroplanes, made it necessary to be 



54 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

dug in properly — an impossibility, just there, 
without regular quarrying tools, the picks 
quickly becoming shapeless. However, one 
or two crowbars appeared suddenly from 
nowhere, and the work of entrenching went 
on slowly but satisfactorily, increasing our 
thirst to an incredible extent as the dust got 
into our throats. 

After a while I went along to the doctor's 
dug-out to get some anti- dysentery pills, and 
found that he had gone sick himself the day 
before. But his substitute gave me various 
mixtures to swallow, and told me to report 
my progress at intervals. There was a 
delightful view over the bay from the doctor's 
dug-out, reminiscent of the view from King 
Arthur's Castle at Tintagel, as far as the 
land and the colour of the sea were concerned. 
The lovely island of Samothrace loomed large 
on the horizon : it might have been the Isle 
of Skye, from its shape and colour. Between 
Suvla and Samothrace lay innumerable ships. 
I never longed so much for the life of a sailor 
as then. There was something so comfort- 
able and serene about the way those ships 
were lying on the waveless blue sea, and I 
knew that on most of them a bottle of beer 
would be obtainable for sixpence. 

I returned slowly to the company mess, 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 5 5 

where our captain had taken up his abode. 
It consisted of a flat platform of sand and 
rocks built out from the steep slope of the 
hillside. An ingenious arrangement of ropes 
and strings, designed and executed by a 
subaltern, who had lately been running a 
trans-continental railroad through the virgin 
forests and hills of Canada, and who had 
acquired the knack of making himself and his 
neighbours comfortable in any surroundings, 
supported a canopy of leafy branches that 
shaded all of us. This company officers' 
mess did not profess to be shell-proof, but it 
was certainly inhabitable. The kitchen, con- 
sisting of our servants and their mess tins, 
a pile of bully-beef tins, our water-bottles, 
and a bag of biscuits, lay in a little hollow 
close at hand, and was quite efficient as far 
as it went. 

After lunch I repaired to my own " scoop- 
out " on the crest, and discussed the relative 
merits of macadam and wood paving for 
London streets with my platoon sergeant, 
who, since his retirement from the Regular 
Army, had been O.C. road-menders in a 
metropolitan borough. The conversation 
drifted to dysentery (on which topic I spoke 
feelingly), dead Turks and the regiments to 
our right and left. Also, no N.C.O. of ours 



56 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

could refrain from making a punning, but 
laudatory, allusion to the name of our 
adjutant. When this joke had been duly 
launched, the conversation returned to a 
topic that was seldom absent from our minds 
— a pint of good old English beer, and sleep 
was the natural consequence. But, alas ! I 
was soon aroused by orders to make a chart 
of the trenches of the half battalion in my 
vicinity, which took me some time and much 
pondering over a prismatic compass. 

Next day was remarkable for the arrival 
of our " first reinforcements " from the Isle 
of Lemnos. The number of my platoon was 
swelled to 63, and the obvious delight of the 
reinforcements at being in such a beautiful 
place (compared with Lemnos) and at meet- 
ing their friends once more bucked us all up 
and made us feel that it wasn't such a bad 
place after all. It was as though a ration of 
champagne had been issued to all ranks. 

Good fortunes never come singly. In the 
train of the first reinforcements came our first 
mail for five long weeks. Then even dysen- 
tery lost its horrors. I got three letters and 
50 cigarettes ! Six illustrated papers arrived 
for the company, and an old newspaper that 
told of Lloyd George's triumph over the 
Welsh patriots. Moreover, a box from Fort- 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 57 

num & Mason arrived, full of good things, for 
the mess. 

We ate herrings in tomato sauce for supper, 
and took up our posts for the night refreshed 
in body and mind ; but the advancing strides 
of dysentery and an enterprising sniper 
(luckily a contemptible shot) took a mean 
and continuous advantage of my indisposi- 
tion. 



CHAPTER VII 

BATTLE 

When morning at last came, the morning 
of August 15th, a Sunday, I crawled to 
the doctor again for more pills. He said I 
would have to retire for a rest to the beach 
next day, unless matters suddenly improved. 
In the meantime he gave me a gigantic pill. 
While I was pessimistically contemplating 
the immense bulk and unprepossessing colour 
of the pill, a fellow-subaltern limped in with 
one boot off. The sole of his foot and the 
underneath of his toes were full of thorns, 
which he begged the doctor to remove, 
explaining that while bathing the evening 
before he had accidentally trodden on a 
spiked sea-urchin whose pink and purple 
prickles had run in and broken off. After 
half an hour with the tweezers most of them 
were extracted, and together we went back 
along the path up to the crest. I swallowed 
the pill, after many experimental gulps, on 
the way back. 

On our return to the company mess we 
found that the box of food had brought forth 

58 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 59 

a big fruit cake, which the captain was 
hewing into Homeric sUces, as befitting 
hungry men. 

We had hardly begun to devour them, 
however, when a message came from head- 
quarters to get ready to move at noon ; and 
the captain hurried off for details, while we 
went to get the platoons ship-shape, collect 
the digging tools and issue some water. 

On his return the captain told us that the 
division was about to launch an attack upon 
a certain line, to straighten out our Z-like 
position, supported by a Territorial division 
on the right and the torpedo-boat destroyer 
on the left. Our own particular part in the 
proceedings was left rather vague. 

I was all for finishing the cake before we 
embarked upon anything rash, but was over- 
ruled ; so the box was packed up again and 
sent back for safe keeping to the quarter- 
master. 

In a few minutes all was ready for the 
move. Two ammunition boxes of water were 
to be carried behind each platoon (we had 
seen the result of the lack of it a few days 
before). The canvas bandoliers were slung 
on, chin-straps drawn down to keep the 
helmets on, etc. I secured a casualty's rifle 
and bayonet, and made a brief exhortation 



60 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

to the section commanders. It would have 
been much longer, but was unfortunately 
cut short by orders to lead on my platoon, 
down back along the little path past the 
battalion headquarters and the doctor's 
little dug-out. 

A mountain battery passed us on the path, 
or rather we got off the path to let it by. It 
was very ornamental with its mules and 
turbaned drivers ; and I am told that it did 
excellent work that day. 

We filed down into the hollow just by the 
lower arm of our Z, past " B " company's 
trenches, where I had just time for a few 
hurried " Good mornings." A little moun- 
tain gun appeared on their trench's parapet, 
jumping about as it went off, kicking up 
clouds of sand and a great noise. 

We crossed their trench and advanced into 
the low scrub to a little hollow where the 
company commander was waiting for us. 
Just as I was jumping across the trench one 
of the gunner officers advised me to take off 
my collar and tie if I wanted to return, so as 
to be more like the men ; so I unfastened 
them as we went on, and put them in my 
pocket. 

The company commander told me that 
the Turks were entrenched straight ahead 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 61 

of us. " A " and " D " companies formed the 
front attacking line—" A " company on the 
slope of the hill and " D " company carrying 
down the line into the valley. Two of our 
(" D ") company platoons had gone on 
already. I was to deploy mine at once and 
advance in support. 

There was no time for the elaboration 
of details. We came under fire as w^e 
deployed. In front of us was a gradual 
downward slope for about 250 yards, and 
then a long, flat, open space which rose to a 
large spur some 800 yards ahead. This 
presumably was the Turkish position. To 
our left, rising up above us fairly steeply, 
and continuing all the way, was the ridge we 
had just been holding. We were advancing 
now parallel to it, along its foot. The ground 
was covered with low scrub, and here and 
there an open patch of sand or withered 
grass. 

My platoon deployed on either side of me, 
and we began our advance, stumbling over 
the rough ground. As we proceeded it became 
impossible to keep a perfect line. Now and 
then a clump of bush or a hollow in the 
ground hid the men from their neighbours. 
Some places were so exposed that it w^as 
necessary to race across them at full speed, 



62 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

others so thorny and rocky as to be almost 
impassable. So that it can easily be under- 
stood how important each man's own initia- 
tive and perseverance was. Orders by word 
of mouth were, of course, impossible in the 
din of the guns and the bursting shells, the 
incessant and voluminous roar of rifle fire 
and the whole orchestra of bullets and 
ricochets and shell splinters that streamed 
past us or danced at our feet. Orders by 
signal were equally and utterly futile, seeing 
that one could rarely be visible to more than 
four of one's men at once. So that for all 
intents and purposes each man was his own 
master as never before in his military 
existence ; and of all the men whom I could 
see that day none could have been better 
led than they were by their own good sense 
and sense of duty. 

In view of the nature of the ground, the 
tactics of the enemy and their complete 
invisibility, a steady and continuous advance 
seemed best. The bullets from rifles and 
machine guns were descending in a curtain 
over the ground that we were covering, the 
sand was dancing up about our feet, dust 
and smoke were leaping up in little clouds, 
shrapnel was bursting overhead, and a great 
deal of small shell was falling innocuously 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 63 

enough, but with a terrifying trumpeting, in 
every direction. 

To He down seemed as dangerous as to 
walk on, and certainly less useful ; for we 
could see no Turks to shoot, even had we no 
friends in our immediate front, whose line we 
were to strengthen, and who, to judge their 
casualties by our own, would badly need that 
reinforcement. 

To the left front, where the ground rose 
and the scrub grew thin, I could just make 
out the long line of " A " company's advance, 
and, looking back, " B " and " C " com- 
panies just deployed and coming down the 
slope behind us. Straight ahead I could see 
no troops at all. 

Suddenly a broad patch opened out before 
us, covered with shrivelled grass that shone 
white in the sun. There were half a dozen of 
my men close by me and we raced across it 
for dear life. 

The presence of bullets is far more obvious 
when they kick up the dust on a broad, open 
patch like that ; for my own part, I longed 
to be the other side of it, especially as we had 
to pass a most unsavoury spectacle on the 
way — two dead soldiers, an Englishman and 
a Turk, lying alone together in the grilling 
sun. They must have been lying there thus for 



64 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

many days, and their blackened faces were 
in hideous contrast with the bright new 
khaki drill and helmet. Two snipers, I 
suppose, or scouts. 

A cloud of gaudy flies buzzed up as we ran 
past, and I thought that nothing mattered 
so long as I did not fall just there. At length 
we reached the farther side, where the ground 
became once more uneven and covered with 
scrub, rising a little. 

Then, on the right, a few yards off, I saw 
the edge of the platoon we were to support, 
lying extended in a firing position, and de- 
cided to prolong their line to the left, rather 
than thicken their present one, seeing that 
there was a gap to be filled and the enemy's 
fire was coming thick and fast. 

I looked round to see if the rest of my 
platoon on the left were coming up. They 
had not got the open patch to cross, and con- 
sequently could not come up so fast as we. 

Suddenly I was hit in the right shoulder 
and knocked over : the blood poured like 
a fountain down my sleeve. One of the men 
rushed up and helped me off with my equip- 
ment and jacket. I thought the brachial 
artery was hit and felt exhausted. As a 
matter of fact it cannot have been, but my 
arm was broken. I sent the man on to join 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 65 

the firing line, and looked at my wrist watch : 
the time was a quarter to two. We had been 
three-quarters of an hour in action. 

Just then I saw one of my men staggering 
about with a frantic expression in his eyes. 
The two canvas bandoliers, full of ammuni- 
tion, slung round his body were ablaze, and 
he was wrestling to get them off. He disap- 
peared. 

I did not notice much more until I felt a 
wallop on the side of the head, and my helmet 
rolled off. " A piece of shell," I thought, 
" and probably in my brain." Blood ran 
over my face, and I began to wonder how on 
earth a man could tell whether he had been 
killed or not. At length I decided that I 
was alive, and picking up my helmet made 
an examination. There were two neat little 
holes in it, such as are made by rifle bullets. 
At this point I realised that I was lying upon 
a little eminence, from which, in view of the 
ceaseless sighing and caterwauling of bullets 
past my head, I judged it prudent to 
descend. 

My arm, which was entirely bereft of feel- 
ing and seemed to be unattached, I hitched 
into my braces, and eventually was on my 
feet. I started to descend the eminence. 
Hardly had I gone ten yards down when I 

E 



66 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

felt a terrific crash on the left hip. " That," 
I thought, " must be an entire shell," as I 
was knocked down into a clump of blue 
teasel. I put my left hand down to examine 
the damage, and pulled a bundle of letters, 
now covered with blood, from my trouser 
pocket. A neat hole pierced them, of exactly 
the shape and size of a rifle bullet travelling 
sideways. 

A wild panic and desire to escape from 
bullets seized me. I managed to get on to 
my feet, or rather foot, once more and to 
proceed for a few paces. Then faintness 
overcame me and I fell again. 

When recovered I looked at the time, but 
found the watch was broken. With my left 
hand I managed to erect a little pile of small 
stones between my head and the Turks, and 
began to take stock of the situation. 

It was now, presumably, about two 
o'clock. The sun would be uncomfortably 
hot till seven or eight. It might be dark by 
nine : until it was dark there was no hope 
of stretcher-bearers. They would not be 
allowed up during the incessant fire. There 
were, then, at least seven hours to wait. 

With my free hand I took off my puttees at 
my leisure and bound them round my head. 
This would serve as bandage, turban and 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 67 

pillow. Next came the ampule of iodine, 
which I broke and poured into my shoulder 
through the torn shirt. It seemed to attract 
the flies, who came, green- and blue-bottles, 
in dozens to the feast. I began to stink 
horribly in the sun. I lay listening. 

Rifle bullets and streams of machine gun 
fire poured over me, but I was just in cover, 
I think, from these. Now and then a shell 
would burst a little nearer than the rest, and 
one once fell almost at my feet, covered me 
with sand, but failed to explode. I watched 
it carefully for some time in case there had 
been a mistake in timing the fuse ; but it 
never burst. 

Once a few puffs of blue smoke and the 
scent of burning thyme drifted into my 
nostrils. The scene of the burning plain 
flashed into my mind. I turned my head to 
watch. The tiny flames in the wild thyme 
met a little patch of sand and died away : 
there was luckily no wind that day. 

Thirst was the greatest hardship. It may 
interest those whose relations are wounded 
to know that broken limbs and a cracked head 
do not hurt till hospital. Those interested in 
" The Angels at Mons " may be glad to hear 
that there were angels at Suvla Bay — mere 
mirages coming to thirsty, wounded men : the 

E2 



68 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

forms of dainty nurses tripping through the 
scrub, among the bullets, with neat red- 
crossed aprons, carrying bowls of nectar to 
assuage our thirst. 

I saw few real people while lying in that 
place. Occasionally a straggler would come 
and ask where such and such a company was, 
and I would send him on ahead. At length, 
at dusk, not far off, I heard the shouts and 
screams of a bayonet charge confusedly above 
me, and a little later the rattle of entrenching 
tools. The fire died down. I heard a little 
rustle in the bush behind me. It was the 
water-carriers. A real boy with real water 
came and knelt beside me, giving me drink 
and talking to me, and putting a haversack 
for my pillow. 

After a while I sent him off, because I was 
stinking so vilely, telling him to let someone 
know where I was in case the wounded could 
be moved that night. My shoulder was by 
this time full of maggots. 

Though there was no other wounded man 
in sight, the whole valley was resounding 
with that ghastly cry, " Stretcher-bearers ! 
Stretcher-bearers ! " and awful curses. All 
day when the din of firing sank a little I had 
heard it. It went on all night until the dawn. 
The valley was full of groaning. No stret- 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 69 

cher-bearers came : there were not enough, 
and they were not allowed. I began to give 
up hope of leaving the spot where I lay, 
being sure that another day's sun would be 
too much ; besides, it was really No Man's 
Land, and had been under fire for a week by 
day. I turned over and lay on my face in the 
sand. 

I was aroused by footsteps near by, and 
the most welcome sound of a fellow-subal- 
tern's voice, together with that of the com- 
pany commander and the sergeant-major. 

They put me in the bottom of a blanket, 
eight of them, and carried me back in the 
dark, over the rough ground, to a little hollow 
where were a wounded subaltern and a 
wounded major and many other wounded. 

Just before dawn they moved us farther 
back again, this time in a waterproof sheet. 
Here, at dawn, the doctor gave me two pills 
of morphia, and the subaltern something 
much more welcome — a little brandy in a 
flask. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WOUNDED 

There we lay in a row, thinking the day 
would never come, till suddenly we were 
aware that the sun was up, and as hot as 
ever, once again. I missed my helmet very 
badly now, but, after those terrible hours of 
chill before the dawn, the sun's heat was 
most welcome ; so I got a man to take the 
towel from my chest and wind it turban- wise 
about my head. The hours went on and still 
no stretchers came. 

At about this time I must have made some 
particularly gloomy remark, for the wounded 
major next me on the right began to argue. 
" Nonsense ! Nonsense ! What ? Nonsense ! 
What ? Why, we'll soon be in a hospital 
ship and off to Alexandria ! Eh ? What ? 
Perfect palaces, those ships ! Perfect palaces ! 
What? Yes! What? Beautiful nurses! 
What? Perfect Paradise ! What? Drinks! 
Eh ? What ? Whisky and soda ! What ? " 
And indeed, besides amusing us, his words 
were magical ; for up a stretcher came as he 
was speaking and stretcher-bearers all com- 

70 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 71 

plete ! We had begun to think there were 
none left in Suvla, and the sight of them was 
worth twice as much to me as morphia. 
Quickly they lifted up the major and carried 
him away. 

As soon as he was gone the other wounded 
subaltern and I began discussing the part 
the major had played in " the show " the day 
before. We had both met him in the thick of 
it — buttons, badges and leggings gleaming 
out like heliographs in the sun, map-case 
swinging, straps and buckles in the utmost 
state of refulgence, the sand dancing with 
bullets round his dazzling boots — as he stood 
bolt upright on a little knoll with his field 
glasses fixed firmly at his eyes, complaining 
with bitterness and indignation that those 
" ruffian Turks " were " turning out half- 
naked to meet the Fusiliers ! " 

So we talked on, while the noise of firing, 
which had never quite left off, grew louder 
and louder. We could hear the big shells 
whistling over us, and the sound of the firing 
and the bursting of them far beyond, 
apparently upon the beach where we should 
go, if we were lucky enough to get so far on 
the way to the hospital ships. We doubted 
if we would, for it was now long since we had 
been hit, and a wounded man is naturally 



72 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

despondent if he cannot walk, when there 
are none to carry him. We began to hear a 
whimpering here and there among the 
stunted oaks about us ; and the cries for 
" stretcher-bearers ! " that had ceased, from 
despair, I suppose, at dawn, broke out again 
monotonously, in piteous, almost angry, 
voices. Strangely enough, though all were 
very thirsty now that the sun was hot, I 
never heard a single shout for water, nor 
had I heard it all the night before. Safety 
was all we wanted, and that is the plain 
truth, for wounded men are apt to forget 
their unimportance in the battlefield. 

At length back came the stretcher and I was 
lifted off the oil-sheet on to it — an awkward 
job when a leg and an arm on opposite sides 
of the body are broken. The bearers picked 
their burden up and started off on the long 
journey to the beach. A man went on ahead 
to pick out the smoothest way ; yet even 
then there were countless places where 
boulders had to be climbed down, where the 
prickly bushes joined across the tiny track, 
where bodies lay, or where stray shells had 
obliterated the path. Some places, too, where 
patches under shrapnel fire had better be 
avoided — and so on. The journey was a long 
one and a slow. For me it was tiring and 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 73 

terrifying enough, but for the bearers — men 
of the 31st Field Ambulance — a splendid 
unit which certainly deserved the official 
recognition of its gallantry that it afterwards 
received — for them it must have been worse 
still, carrying a dead- weight of twelve stone 
for nearly two miles under an intermittent 
fire in the hot Sun. Yet they rarely put me 
down to rest their arms — only, in fact, when 
they felt the stretcher handles slipping from 
their cramped, perspiring hands. 

We had travelled in this way for about a 
mile, when I heard a familiar voice inquiring 
if it was I upon the stretcher, and, looking 
up, I savv^ one of my sergeants walking along 
beside us. The forefinger and a part of the 
palm of his right hand had been shot off the 
day before, and his face was a deathly grey. 
His forehead was covered with sweat and he 
could scarcely walk. He began to chaff me 
about my towel " turban," " Was I a 
Turkish prisoner ? " and so on. Then he 
bent down and whispered (for hospital order- 
lies and stretcher-bearers are not permitted, 
thanks to the Hague Convention, to listen to 
such things), " I've got your revolver, sir ! " 
and he tapped a bulging pocket with his 
uninjured hand. " Thanks very much," I 
said. " I must have left it in the field y ester- 



74 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

day." His face fell. " Why," he said, " you 
promised it to me if you were killed." So I 
told him he could keep it ; and then, " I'll just 
go off and see if I can find your valise," he 
said, and disappeared into the scrub again. 

Soon after he had gone some tents came 
into view, with the Union Jack and Red 
Cross flag hanging over them. They were 
standing just above the little beach, where 
lately (it seemed years ago) we had landed in 
the middle of the night and found a stained 
tarpaulin for a hospital. Yes, certainly the 
sight of those white tents was good. But 
between them and us were some of our 
biggest guns, concealed with branches and 
sandbags, which we should have to pass. 
The roar and vibration of their firing did not 
alleviate our distress ; nor did the answering 
shells that came tumbling round us from the 
Turkish artillery in search of them. 

As we came down closer to the guns and 
the shells that were trying to destroy them 
the bearers set me down upon the path and 
went a few yards off for a brief council of 
war. After a moment they returned, took 
up the stretcher, adjusted the straps, and 
without a word set off at a fast but steady 
march, never stopping or hesitating for a 
moment until we reached the tents, right past 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 75 

the battery. There were many similar httle 
parties to ours that morning along that very 
path, and some of them were not so for- 
tunate. 

The tents, beds and floor space were too 
full to admit another " case " : so I was laid 
outside among rows and rows of others, in the 
sun, waiting our turn. Every time a gun of 
the battery near by opened fire an involun- 
tary groan rose up from the stretchers, and 
the same, of course, when a shell fell close. 
One of the tents was hit. The heat was very 
nearly unendurable, and the stench of wounds 
and the swarms of flies quite indescribable. 

At length a doctor came along my row. It 
was easy to see how utterly exhausted he 
was, with days and nights of ceaseless work 
among impossible conditions. He hardly 
spoke at all. When he reached me he wrote 
something on a label and tied it to a button- 
hole in my shirt. 

After some while I was moved on again — 
a few yards only this time — to the beach. 
Here every foot of space between the tideless 
sea and the low cliffs was covered with laden 
stretchers. Being midday there was no shade 
— nothing but flies and stretchers, with here 
and there an orderly with cigarettes. After 
a minute or two a space was found for me, 



76 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

and rajT- bearers went away again to get 
another load, but not before they had found 
me one of the conventional cigarettes and lit 
it. And it is conventional, though none the 
less true, to say that no cigarette ever tasted 
better than did that " Gold Flake " then. 

The time we spent upon that beach in the 
eye of the sun was long — and seemed longer. 
But I had one or two visitors. One of them 
was a Roman Catholic chaplain, who had 
been asked by the wounded major men- 
tioned above to hasten my embarkation into 
a hospital ship. He got me carried on to the 
pontoon pier, which made me feel very 
favoured, and much more likely to get away 
from Suvla Bay. On this pier I found myself 
lying next to the colonel of another Irish 
regiment, who had a bullet in his foot, and 
was consequently swearing at everyone, from 
General to R.A.M.C. orderly, for sending him 
away from his battalion just because he'd 
got a blank scratch on his blank toe. 

Another visitor was my servant, who, 
though he also was suffering with a bullet in 
his foot, had been hobbling about, this way 
and that, to find me, having heard that I was 
in a worse case than I really was. With him 
came the sergeant, who had gone off to find 
my valise, followed by a man carrying the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 77 

valise itself, and then we all " waited on the 
jetty for the first boat leaving for home." 

It was not long before a string of little 
boats was towed alongside by a pinnace, and 
we were carried on to one of them. The 
stretchers were laid in rows on the " decks," 
which consisted of planks laid sideways across 
the boats (which were ordinary row-boats). 

The loading up of these boats took a con- 
siderable time, but the occasional splashes 
of water from stray bullets and shells pre- 
vented the operations from becoming mono- 
tonous, while our innate confidence in the 
Navy made us feel really safe at last. 

Eventually we put off from the jetty, and 
soon the crowded, stinking, grilling beach of 
Suvla Bay was falling away behind us, and 
from our prone position we could see the sides 
of ships gliding majestically past us, and now 
and then the golden puffs of smoke from their 
guns against the blue of the dead-calm sea 
and sky. 

The air was cooler and fresher here, upon 
the water, and the sun seemed kindly after 
all. We felt we were not forgotten any more — 
and with this feeling came a pang of pity for 
the poor unwounded devils still sweating and 
thirsting and struggling in the hell we were 
leaving behind. 



78 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Soon we slowed down, and a great white, 
green-lined wall, with rows of windows by the 
hundred, loomed ahead. A gurgle of water 
from the turn of the rudder, a shout or two, the 
splash of a rope, and an almost imperceptible 
bump, and there we were, made fast to a hospital 
ship, the major's " perfect Paradise " ! 

From the extempore deck of the tiny row- 
ing boats the view looking up the sides of the 
great ship was certainly very cheering. Her 
cool-looking, white wall, with the olive-green 
band and huge Red Crosses, was fringed with 
smiling faces. We could see nothing of their 
owners at that angle — only their elbows and 
their smiles. These were the " walking 
cases" — men slightly wounded in the arm 
or head, for the most part. 

Immediately above us was a busy little 
electric crane, whose crate was running up 
and down incessantly, with its burden of 
" stretcher cases " ; while at the stern of the 
next boat to us the gangway slanted up from 
the water, packed with more walking cases 
going aboard, stumbling, hopping, limping, 
bleeding, leaning on each other's arms and 
necks, and one or two on all fours. Every- 
one who could possibly move a yard without 
being carried insisted on embarking by the 
gangway ; and I expected every moment 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 79 

that the colonel lying next me with a bullet in 
his foot would burst with fury at not being 
allowed to follow suit. 

There is, however, something very amusing 
about being hauled on board, like baggage 
from the quayside, by a crane, though I heard 
of a case where two of the handles of a staff 
captain's stretcher slipped, about 30 feet 
above the water, and he had to hold on by 
his feet (his arms being wounded) like grim 
death for the rest of the journey up and 
inboard. By the time he reached " terra 
firma," or rather the deck, he was almost 
incoherent with rage ; but the Medical Staff 
gathered that he was demanding to be sent 
back that instant to Suvla Bay, where, at any 
rate, he would not be drowned ! 

My own journey in the " lift " was pleasant 
enough, and made one feel one was saying 
good-bye to war; for we knew that the 
Turks would never dream of shelling the Red 
Cross flag on purpose, and we were too far out 
from land to be within the reach of the stray 
shells that made the hospital tents ashore so 
uncomfortable. Last, but by no means 
least, we knew that there would be " medical 
comforts " aboard, in the shape not merely 
of bandages but in all probability of brandies 
and soda too. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WAY TO LEMNOS 

Once on board I was carried down a 
narrow corridor on the top deck level, and 
even through the smell of my wounds there 
penetrated that indescribable but unmistak- 
able aroma of first-class accommodation. It 
may have something to do with the pro- 
digious amount of fresh white paint and 
varnish, or it may be the smell of recent 
soap and water, but it is always there. 

They took me to a small room containing 
about eight cots, all of which were already 
occupied except one. There was a slight 
hitch about lifting me from the stretcher on 
to the cot, because when they raised me the 
stretcher came up too, being glued to the 
remnants of my uniform by the blood which 
had been drying rapidly in the sun upon the 
beach. At last, however, the task was done 
and I was snug in bed. 

After a while a corporal of the R.A.M.C. 
came and cut my uniform off, and I told him 
to chuck it overboard, together with my 
shattered and stained wrist watch, which 

80 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 81 

looked unlikely ever to work again. I was 
partially washed and temporarily bandaged. 
It was a great relief getting my limbs tied up 
after so many hours. The corporal further 
obtained for me a glass of iced lemonade ! 

Feeling now both safe and moderately 
comfortable, I began to survey my fellow- 
passengers. On my right I could see a 
subaltern friend of mine lying on his back, 
but he was sadly altered. He seemed thinner 
and smaller and very pale. I called to him, 
but he did not answer. I supposed my voice 
could not be strong enough. He was staring 
at me. At length I got an orderly to speak 
to him for me ; but on returning to my cot 
he told me that it was Lieutenant Some- 
thing or other ; at any rate, not the boy I was 
thinking of at all. 

On the other side of me, in front, was a 
major. Poor man, he was wounded badly 
in the head and mad. I could not see the 
others from my cot, and no one was speak- 
ing, except an unconscious man in the 
corner. 

After an hour or two the matron arrived, 
with an armful of Red Cross bags, for 
keeping odds and ends, and packets of 
chocolate. If those who had subscribed those 
presents to the Red Cross Fund had seen the 



82 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

joy, almost reverential, with which they were 
received in our stuffy little ward they would 
— well, they would subscribe again, double ! 
True, the chocolate was almost liquid and a 
trifle sour ; but still it was divine. It was 
the fault of the climate that it had lost its 
pristine freshness. 

Soon after this a doctor came and felt my 
pulse. This appeared to cause him small 
satisfaction, so he listened to my heart, which 
was going splendidly and cheered him up. 
He said he would have liked to " operate on 
my arm," but there were so many absolutely 
vital cases on board, and so small a staff to 
deal with them, that he would be obliged to 
leave me for the doctors on shore when we 
landed. I wonder how many men owe the 
preservation of their arms and legs to the 
fact that there are not enough doctors to 
cut them all off when casualties are evacuated 
by the thousand ! 

The next incident of any importance after 
this doctor's brief visit was a meal — without 
exception the very nastiest that I have ever 
had. From my prone position I was unable 
to see it on the plate, but the orderly shovelled 
it into my mouth. It must have been 
buttered eggs, completely stone cold, clammy 
and greasy. However, the good corporal 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 83 

enabled me to wash it away with a glass of 
soda-water. 

It must by this time have been about 
six o'clock in the evening, and the ward was 
intolerably stuffy. Once a chaplain came in 
and began to talk to the major, apparently 
not noticing that he was, mad. They talked 
together about some Turkish coins which the 
major had got in his pocket ; but after a 
little while the major became unable to talk 
at all, so the chaplain came across to my cot. 
I asked him whether there was anyone else of 
my regiment on board, but he did not know. 
I found out next day that he had just buried 
one of them. Indeed, every now and then 
the hospital ship slowed down, stopped, and 
buried her dead. We could see them carried 
along in Union Jacks. 

When the chaplain had gone, the sun 

began to get low in the sky, and this seemed 

a suitable time to attempt to get a little 

sleep. But just as the sun was sinking into 

the sea an appalling noise arose. All the 

coloured labour on board seemed to gather 

on the little piece of deck outside our ward, 

and "sing"! I suppose it is one of the 

peculiar glories of the British Empire that 

all its subjects, temporary or permanent, 

shall be allowed to perform their various 

f2 



84 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

religious devotions without let or hindrance ; 
but we certainly wished that evening that 
some of them could be gagged. The 
" singing " of our coloured crew was horrible. 
It consisted of an interminable psalm — with 
at least eighty spasms — chanted on one 
particularly piercing note : it temporarily 
unhinged me, and we said good-bye to sleep. 

Not long after this musical " turn " the 
ship's engines started, and we were on the 
move, and after another considerable period, 
during which the motions of the boat 
were most unpleasant, we came to a stop 
once more and learnt that we had reached the 
Isle of Imbros. 

There we waited at anchor until dawn, 
when we were told to steam away again, as 
there was no room for us in Imbros : so off 
we went once more, into a roughish sea, and 
came to the Island of Lemnos, to Mudros 
Harbour, where we got orders to disembark. 

The disembarkation of the wounded began 
at about 5 o'clock that afternoon, while the 
sun was still hot. Our ward was one of the 
last to be evacuated. For hours we listened 
to the tramp of stretcher-bearers on the deck, 
and the monotonous rattle of the electric 
crane lifting the stretchers up and down. 

At length two sailors came into the ward 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 85 

with a stretcher, into which I rolled, and they 
put my valise under my head for a pillow. 
They laid me down on deck just under the 
bridge, and proceeded to give me a cigarette. 
Strangely enough, they were men from the 
battleship, lying in the harbour, in which 
my brother had served his first commission 
a year or two before, and directly above me 
on the bridge I saw one of her sub-lieutenants 
directing the operations of disembarkation ; 
so with him, between his bouts of swearing 
like an admiral, I carried on a conversation, 
learning what his ship had been doing since 
the outbreak of war. She seemed to have 
had an interesting time in the Dardanelles. 

Meanwhile the sun was setting and the 
darkness came down fast. The great electric 
light over the crane was turned on to facili- 
tate the work of unloading the ship. The 
little group of bluejacket stretcher-bearers, 
the doctor standing in his shirt sleeves look- 
ing on with arms akimbo, the pale-faced 
bundles of the wounded, and the bustling 
movements of the crane, looked very weird 
in that bright beam of light, and I began to 
wonder whether my arm would ever regain 
the power of movement, to allow me to make 
one day a sketch of the strange scene. I 
wish Brangwyn had been there. One by one 



«6 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

the stretchers disappeared into the blue dark- 
ness over the ship's side, and at length I was 
the next to go. 

In a moment I found myself once more on 
the rough deck of a wobbling rowing boat, 
with a little midshipman in charge — a most 
fatherly boy, who gave me an Egyptian 
cigarette out of an exquisite silver case, and 
eventually took the tiller and gave orders to 
cast off from the hospital ship. 

Once more, but in the cool of night this 
time instead of the burning midday sun, I 
heard the delicious gurgle of small waves 
under the bows of our little boat and the 
even panting of the pinnace that was towing 
us. We ran in and out among big, shadowy 
ships towards a bright light, which drew close 
rapidly, and the midshipman brought us in 
alongside a floating jetty without a bump. 

Instantly I heard the padding of bare feet 
on the deck, and two tall Indians took my 
stretcher up and carried me along the pier. 
But my broken limbs were making me rest- 
less, and the Indians were a trifle rough ; so I 
made use of a few words of Hindustani that I 
had picked up years before from Anglo-Indian 
relatives — remarks that brought an explana- 
tory torrent from my bearers, that I was 
utterly unable to understand. 



CHAPTER X 

LEMNOS HOSPITAL 

Concerning Lemnos Hospital. 

For forty weary days I lay 

In a hospital tent at Lemnos Bay, 

And I longed for the things I could not get — 

Some books, some beer and a cigarette. 

In London now, with plenty of each, 
I long for a glimpse of Lemnos' beach, 
And the forty happy days I spent 
With fifteen friends in a hospital tent. 

At the end of the pier they hoisted me into 
a motor ambulance, laying me on one of the 
top shelves. There were four of us in it now, 
and an orderly to look after us on the way. 
He was a wounded Lowlander, in a semi- 
convalescent state — quite a child. Two Aus- 
tralians were up in front driving. 

One of my companions in the car was a 
subaltern of my own regiment, whom I was 
very glad to see again. The same with a 
second ; but the third was the major with the 
wounded head. He seemed very excited. 

Soon the engines started with a rattle that 
made us swear, and then the car started off 
upon its journey. Road there appeared to 

87 



88 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

be none. Huge pits and hillocks and heavy 
sand, which the driver could not see 
distinctly in the darkness, seemed to mark 
the path. The Lowlander, with legs and 
arms outstretched, tried to keep us from 
tumbling off the sides of the stretchers as for 
more than a mile we rolled and jerked and 
jumped and rattled on — the most unpleasant 
journey, I should hope, that I shall ever 
make. 

The major was in a terrible state of exhila- 
ration. " Faster ! faster ! " he kept crying 
out to the driver ; " faster ! faster ! Can't 
you go any faster ? " But, luckily for the 
rest of us, the driver took his own way in his 
own time. 

At last the car came to a standstill, and we 
could make out the forms of innumerable 
tents. Two huge Australians, clad in shorts 
alone, lifted me, as if I had been a feather, 
from the ambulance, and strode down to one 
of the tents. 

There was a curious hush about the camp. 
Everyone seemed to be talking in gruff 
whispers, as though afraid of being over- 
heard. All about there was a subdued bustle, 
and the muffled sound of footsteps moving 
in sand. 

My bearers stooped and went in under the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 89 

doorway of a small marquee. Inside there 
was an uncertain light given out by an elec- 
tric lamp tied up to one of the tent poles. 
The tent was yellow lined, but black with 
flies asleep. Eight or nine camp beds were 
ranged along each side, most of them full, and 
everyone was talking softly to each other. 

They rested my stretcher against the bed 
nearest to the doorway, and two more order- 
lies came up. The four of them lifted me on 
to the sheets and the stretcher-bearers went 
away. I was bleeding again now, and the 
maggots were very active, stirred up, I sup- 
pose, by their recent jolting journey in the 
motor ambulance. 

One of the new orderlies was oldish, with a 
heavy black moustache ; the other was very 
young-looking and fair. They asked me 
about my wounds and said that a doctor 
would be coming soon. They spoke with a 
slow colonial drawl, and at length the elder 
leant down and whispered confidentially into 
my unbandaged ear, " Would you like a 
brandy and soda ? It's the last one left in 
camp." It may have been very greedy of 
me, but I accepted with alacrity, and soon 
he brought me a tin mug, with a little brandy 
and soda in the bottom of it. 

I promised not to tell " the others " about 



90 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

my good luck, and then the orderhes went 
off to a table in the corner, whereon were 
many tin mugs and bowls and plates and a 
*' Primus " stove burning. 

The older orderly, who was evidently in 
charge of our ward, then made a speech. 
" Would any of you gentlemen like a little 
cocoa ? We can't give you anything else 
to-night. But the stomach cases mustn't 
have anything at all." 

There was a chorus of assent, and the 
cocoa was soon prepared and distributed in 
the tin mugs by Ralph, the younger orderly. 

We had scarcely finished this most wel- 
come meal, when the doctor came in — a major 
of the Australian Medical Corps — and made 
a hurried examination of our wounds in the 
dim light. We had all been tied up in the 
hospital ship, but my bandages had become 
detached during the journey in the motor 
ambulance, so they were now tied up afresh. 
I gave the doctor the message from the ship's 
surgeon about operating on my arm, but he 
told me I must wait until next day, as there 
was no time for any but the most vital opera- 
tions to be done that night. 

My new bandages were very warm, being 
made of a thick flannel, not altogether de- 
sirable in such a hot climate. No splints 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 91 

were put on my arm or leg. To begin with, 
there was a shortage of sphnts ; and, 
secondly, neither my arm nor my leg was 
supposed to be broken. Indeed, I did not 
see how we could discover their true state, 
seeing that they were swollen to a surprising 
size and no bones at all could be felt through 
the swelling. I was not taken to the X-ray 
room (we called it the " Picture Palace," 
being next to the " Theatre ") for a month ; 
but it made no difference, because the bones 
set themselves, and the splinters stuck on to 
them in a most satisfactory way, though, of 
course, the dressings, etc., would have been 
far less uncomfortable with splints. 

The shortage of bandages, too, was tire- 
some. " Orderly, have those bandages come 
back from the wash yet ? " used often to be 
the doctor's question when he came round 
the ward of a morning. For, as our old 
orderly — " Bob " we will call him — explained, 
the hospital was staffed for about 400 men 
and had to take in 1,100 on that single night 
when we arrived. The failure at Suvla Bay 
not only disappointed politicians, but it 
meant an unexpected torrent of casualties, 
that swamped the hospital ships and hospitals 
most cruelly. In France, of course, such 
sudden strains can be adjusted in a day or 



92 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

two. It takes a month or two to deal with 
unanticipated and unprecedented demands 
for feedings doctoring, nursing and evacuat- 
ing tens of thousands on what is practically 
a desert island; where food won't keep; 
where water is worth gold; in conditions 
unfit for women to nurse ; and itself thousands 
of miles from home. 

Soon after the doctor had departed a cor- 
poral came round with a supply of morphia 
and a syringe. He squirted some morphia 
into my fore-arm, but no effect was notice- 
able. Gradually we stopped what talking we 
had been doing and either went to sleep or 
tried to do so. Bob stayed in the ward. He 
said he always stayed in the ward all night 
when fresh cases arrived. He couldn't leave 
it to the night orderly, who, owing to the 
shortage of the staff, was usually a convales- 
cent Tommy, as often as not suffering 
from dysentery, and generally too ill to keep 
awake. At least, so I found while I was 
there. So on this particular night Bob 
stayed in the tent, and I was very glad that 
he did so, for my bandages were too tight, 
and he knew how to readjust them — which he 
did, at the same time removing a number of 
maggots. 

I thought that night would never end. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 93 

The darkness seemed eternal. But at last 
a faint glimmer of light arose, and through 
the tent door, at the foot of my bed, it was 
possible to make out something of the place 
to which we had been brought in the 
darkness. 

The whole country was composed of a 
reddish-yellow sand, utterly devoid of vege- 
tation, which borrowed its general tint from 
any variety of light that there might be at 
the time. This morning it was a bluish-grey, 
deepening into a dark violet where the land 
sloped down to the sea, about two hundred 
yards away. The sea was a gigantic natural 
harbour, crammed with ships of every colour, 
shape and size ; and beyond the harbour 
rose the high, encircling mountains, tipped 
with vermilion, this moment, where the 
rising sun was lighting up the hill-tops. Bob 
told me that one of them, a tiny point mauve 
rather than vermilion, was Mount Athos in 
Greece. And, indeed, in such a climate one 
might well see so far. 

The possibility of watching all the shipping 
in this great bay was most welcome for a 
pastime. There was constantly some ship or 
other moving in and out. There were war- 
ships of several nations — the low, thick 
battleships of France, a five-funnelled 



94 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Russian cruiser, British battleships and 
British cruisers, and innumerable Allied 
ships of smaller size, from monitors and 
mine-layers down to submarines and hydro- 
planes. Between them ran an everlasting 
stream of picket boats and signals — flash 
signals at first, but, as the sun rose, sema- 
phore and flags. 

Besides these warships were forests of 
transports, carrying troops, guns, mules, 
food, coal and munitions of all kinds ; and, 
most picturesque of all, perhaps, the swarms 
of small Greek sailing boats, which clung like 
parasites to the sides of the larger ships. 

There was, too, an incessant stream of 
hospital ships ; some steaming in from 
Gallipoli with their cargoes of wounded men, 
some steaming out to fetch another load, 
and many recently arrived lying at anchor 
while they were unloaded, or taking in a new 
supply of coal. 

In the background, but towering over 
every ship in the harbour, I recognised that 
first morning the huge four-funnelled bulk 
of the Mauretaiiia, which had recently arrived, 
I heard, with a brigade and a half of infantry 
on board, making the voyage out from Eng- 
land in under six days ! Enough to make 
any Hun submarine's mouth water for a year ! 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 95 

As the sun rose up, innumerable ships, 
hitherto concealed in the heavy violet haze, 
stood sharply out in their own colours against 
a deep blue sea. Just then, in the French 
camp, which ran along to our left and front, 
between the Australian camp and the har- 
bour, I heard the reiterated calls of our 
Allies' ''r6veille," and shortly afterwards a 
party of French soldier-carpenters came up 
to the fence that divided the two camps just 
in front of our tent door. Short and stout, 
with huge pith helmets, crimson trousers and 
blue cummerbunds, they stood there in the 
sun, conducting a heated argument with 
many gestures, expletives, and pointings to 
the ground, the fence, the sea, the sky, the 
tents, and the island in general. After about 
an hour the palaver ceased, and they dis- 
appeared for a few minutes, to return with 
loads of timber and tools, with which for the 
rest of the day, in a perfect silence only 
broken by the gurgle of wine in thirsty 
throats, they ran up the neatest little wooden 
hut that you could wish to see. 

The French camp provided endless diver- 
sions. There was a jetty running out from 
it into the harbour, upon which a gang of 
Turkish prisoners, clad in a blue-grey uniform 
reminiscent of Huns, were working all day 



96 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

long at the unloading of stores. Huge stacks 
of empty sandbags as big as houses, and 
absolute mountains of hay and ammunition, 
were being erected everywhere, amid the 
greatest bustle, the creaking of countless 
primitive Greek carts, and the shouting of 
orders. The troops employed about their 
camp — an immense collection of shining 
tents spreading right round an inlet of the 
huge harbour — were of several colours and 
nationalities, bearing many different uni- 
forms ; and, besides the troops, were French 
bluejackets and naval officers, resplendent 
in the white and gold of their summer 
uniform. 

To our right, and behind us, were the tents 
of the Australian hospital, all full and over- 
flowing, the floors being occupied, in many 
eases, where the beds had run short. To the 
right, a little below us, were the isolation 
tents, full of men suffering from enteric, etc. 
The whole of the ground, or rather sand, 
between the tents was crawling with flies, 
just waking up for their day's enjoyment and 
for our day's aggravation. 

Here and there the bronzed Australian 
orderlies, in their usual charming deficiency 
of clothing, were fetching and carrying 
medical stores among the tents. A few were 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 97 

fixing up a small bell-tent, quite close to our 
marquee, to contain some poor fellow who 
for various reasons could not be kept any- 
longer among the rest in his own ward. Two 
men, with an iron wheelbarrow, were collect- 
ing large stones and placing them in patterns 
by the doors of tents. They also brought a 
pile into our tent, for propping up the legs of 
the camp beds, because the tent was pitched 
upon a slope and the wounded were slipping, 
mattresses and all, off the beds on to the 
floor, which consisted of a sandy sailcloth 
laid upon the sand. 

Down the hill, and away to the right, two 
stretcher-bearing parties were moving off 
towards the cemetery. 

That was all that I could see through the 
tent door, but it was certainly novel and 
varied enough a scene to distract me some- 
what from my own surroundings and the 
pain. Altogether, I felt that I was immensely 
fortunate to be there, seeing that I was now 
upon a bed on terra firma, and would be able, 
probably, to get sufficient " drinkle " to 
prevent my suffering any more from thirst. 
There seemed, too, every prospect of my 
nerves enjoying a complete and badly needed 
rest ; whereas in hospitals at home in 
England, I had heard, were visitors, hospital 



98 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

nurses, gramophones, telephone messages, 
thermometers and charts, not to mention 
bottles of medicine and many other torments 
for the severely wounded ! Besides, in 
London the whole ward would have been 
woken up by now and made to wash before 
breakfast, while in Lemnos basins, orderlies 
and water were much too scarce for such 
red-tape, being procurable only by an insist- 
ence which amounted almost to rudeness in 
the eyes of our dear old orderly, and to 
surliness, grousing, or sheer bad form in the 
eyes of one's fellow-patients; and the same 
with the making of the beds. Washing and 
bed-making, therefore, became events as 
rare and as pleasant in this peaceful hospital 
as circumstances could possibly make them. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE DAILY ROUND 

At about six o'clock, when the sun was now 
well up, so that we could see each other 
clearly, a certain liveliness arose in the tent. 
Those who had been waiting for their neigh- 
bours to awake became aware that their 
neighbours had been waiting for signs of 
wakefulness from them — signs which con- 
sisted, every morning, in beating away the 
flies that left the black masses on the tent 
walls for our faces. It became a proverb, 
therefore, " The early fly gathers the sleeping 
face." 

Being in the corner I had only one neigh- 
bour, a fellow-subaltern of my regiment, the 
one who had been my companion in the 
motor ambulance. Needless to say, we had 
any amount to say to each other. After 
mutual congratulations, we began to go over 
the list of our officers and tell each other what 
we knew of their fate. It appeared that out 
of the twenty-three of us who had gone into 
the action two were left safe and sound, eight 
had been killed, and the rest wounded. We 

99 g2 



100 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

discussed the action from every point of view 
— strategical, tactical, personal and civilian. 
We learnt from each other how our friends 
had fallen, and where each one was hit — how 
one of our captains, already wounded, had 
given his life in an attempt to save his 
wounded servant ; how gallantly our colonel 
fell ; how splendidly the men had all be- 
haved ; what we thought would happen in 
the end ; and how long it would take to get 
astride the Dardanelles. 

I heard from him at that time, too (in 
future let me call him "George"), a little tale 
that seems worth while repeating here. He 
was being carried on a stretcher down to the 
beach, on the morning after the battle, with 
his right arm shattered to bits. Just as the 
little party was getting near the shore an 
officer's servant, an old Irishman, a veteran 
with ribands running right across his breast, 
who had seen him growing up from childhood 
at home in Ireland, ran up crying to the 
stretcher and kissing him went back along 
the path up to the trenches of his regiment. 
And indeed it is a most heartrending sight for 
an old soldier to see his regiment cut to pieces 
seemingly in vain. 

So we talked on : of how we saw our 
general dancing with excitement on the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 101 

parapet of the front-line trenches, as we were 
leaving them for the assault ; how many- 
guns had been supporting our advance— and 
how few ; whether our long, hard year of 
training had been quite necessary for so few 
wild hours of action ; and a thousand other 
details connected with the last few days. 

Meanwhile from the farther end of the 
tent came two " Good morning ! They told 
me you were killed ! " 's— and there I saw 
two more of our subalterns, one of whom, 
with a vilely shattered thigh, was the 
pluckiest, cheeriest fellow of the lot, though 
Heaven knows how he managed it, seeing 
that a splendid and devoted twin-brother had 
been shot in that same fight. The other had 
a broken shoulder and arm, and carried (in 
fact, still carries, I believe) a part of the brass 
regimental title in his shoulder joint, knocked 
in by the bullet that had broken it. 

Seeing so many of us wide awake. Bob 
opened a huge basket, which he had hitherto 
been using as a wash-hand stand, that stood 
near the wooden table in his corner, and 
produced from its capacious interior a num- 
ber of fly whisks, made of palm-leaves fixed 
upon a stick ; these he distributed round the 
ward. Fortunately, every one of us, I think, 
had one arm or other left with which to wage 



102 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

war against the elusive but ever-present 
flies. 

The brief glimpse we had been able to catch 
of the interior of Bob's basket made us 
clamour for a more intimate knowledge of its 
contents ; but Bob refused to depart so far 
from the daily programme, upon which he 
was now evidently about to embark ; for at 
that moment Ralph, the younger orderly, 
came in and was sent to get the bucket full of 
drinking water, while Bob busied himself 
about the " Primus " stove— an elaborate job, 
because there were only two " prickers " left 
in the camp, and these were always being 
borrowed by vagrant orderlies from the other 
wards. At last, however, the ''Primus" was 
induced to burn, and Ralph, returning with 
the water, put it on to boil, and went off for 
some rations. He came back with a bowlful 
of eggs, some tea, a tiny tin of Bovril, a tin 
of condensed milk and some bread. Then, on 
the table, the orderlies made breakfast. The 
bread was cut up into large slices and spread 
with jam, produced from a box under the 
table — " plum and apple," of course. Natu- 
rally enough, butter was unobtainable. 

While the jam sandwiches were being made 
Bob was " testing " the eggs — tiny little 
yellow things that came from Athens or 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 103 

Alexandria — an operation that consisted of 
dropping them into hot water and seeing 
whether they exploded or not (if it exploded 
on contact with the water an egg was con- 
sidered to be a bad one). 

Finally, when all the eggs had been dropped 
in the water and only two or three had been 
found wanting, when all the sandwiches 
had been cut and jammed, and all the flies in 
the tent had settled on them, the cook-house 
bugle blew, and Ralph set off with a bucket 
and basin, to return in ten minutes with the 
bucket full of steaming porridge and the 
basin full of — no ! surely our eyes were 
playing us false ! — the old, familiar, twelve- 
ounce, crimson little tins of bully-beef! 
" The frozen meat has run out to-day," said 
Ralph apologetically ; " there's not a pound 
of it in the harbour." 

The porridge, though extremely liquid, was 
very good to drink, and was all I could 
manage that first morning, though some of 
the hardier ate all they could lay their 
hands on. 

Now this was our typical, indeed un- 
varying, breakfast, except that the bully- 
beef was changed after a week or so for frozen 
meat, and that towards the end of my stay 
in Lemnos the porridge ran out altogether. 



104 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Those of us who were " milk diets " got 
bread, porridge and tea, but not meat or 
jam. " Chicken diets " had the bully-beef 
until such times (about a fortnight later) as 
some tinned chicken came sailing into the 
harbour. " Ordinarys " had everything. 

When we had all finished breakfast, Bob 
went away to get some well-earned sleep, 
and Frank washed up the breakfast things 
in a small tin basin on the table. The refuse 
was thrown into a large tub by the door, 
much to the delight of the flies. When the 
bowls and mugs were cleaned, the sweeping 
of the ward began. This was done with a 
large stable broom that effectually lifted all 
but a negligible quantity of the sand from 
the sailcloth floor on to our beds, whose 
coverlets (white, at first, with a large Red 
Cross in the centre) quickly enough became 
a reddish-brown : so did the sheets, so did 
the blankets, and so did we ourselves. But 
it was a rule that the ward should be swept 
before the doctor came round in the morning. 
Soon afterwards Bob returned, saying that 
he had had a bathe in the sea, but had found 
it impossible to sleep. He then began to 
compile one of his famous " Requisition " 
forms. He pulled a little slip of paper and a 
pencil out of the jam box, and, sitting down 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 105 

at the " kitchen " table, asked if there was 
anything in the world we wanted. 

A chorus of demands broke out : "A pair 
of pyjamas," " A towel," " A tooth-brush," 
" A cigarette," " A razor," " A shaving 
brush," " Soap," " A bottle of Bass," " A 
boat to England," " A nurse," '' A gramo- 
phone," " The Times;' " A pipe," " A pair 
of slippers," "A dressing-gown " —and in- 
numerable other requirements were hurled 
at him. 

" Well, I'd better see what I've got in my 
basket first," he said, rising, " before I fill 
up this Requisition form. But I don't 
suppose you'll be able to get any of those 
things " — and he opened the basket. 

First of all came out some weird and 
wonderful pyjamas— odd suits of coloured 
cotton print and chintz (I trust, fair readers, 
that these are the right words : I mean the 
stuff you see on drawing-room chairs) — 
which he distributed as far as they would go. 
Being nearest to the basket, I was able to 
get the first pick, and chose a coat with a 
pattern of red roses on a black ground, and 
trousers of crimson check with bunches of 
lilac laid over them in diamonds. Only one 
dressing-gown appeared, and that one must 
have been a captured Hun's cavalry cloak 



i 



106 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

from the look of it. This one gown was to do 
for all of us. There were four pairs of 
slippers, that were divided to suit individual 
requirements ; for instance, I shared one 
pair with an ex-architect who had a wound 
in the right leg, while mine was in the left. 

There was plenty of tooth-powder (Japa- 
nese, in wooden boxes) and almost enough 
tooth-brushes, as well as a tiny towel each. 
" There isn't a razor obtainable in the 
island," said Bob, " but there's a Greek 
barber lives up at the Windmill at the top of j 
the camp, and I daresay he'd come down 
and shave you if you asked him." 

So we sent a message up to the barber to 
come down and shave us. Ralph came back 
from the errand with a grin all over his face. 
" He says he can't leave his tent, the dirty 
old thief," he explained, " because last time 
he came to shave a gentleman here some of 
our boys made off with all his kit — razors, 
soap, brushes and all. Serve him jolly well 
right, too. I hate these oily Greeks." 

So we had arrived at an impasse — seeing 
that we could not go to the barber and the 
barber dared not come to us. So Bob wrote 
down razors on his Requisition form, as I 
suppose he had done every morning for many 
months, knowing he would never get them. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 107 

And then the doctor came in and dressed 
our wounds. When he came to my bed he 
told me I was very lucky, as no operation 
would now be necessary on my arm, as Bob 
and I had strafed so large a percentage of 
its population the night before. So he 
squirted in some stuff to wake up the rest of 
them, and tied it up, and then my leg and 
head. 

We were not supposed to look at our own 
wounds, so had to make arrangements with 
our neighbours to describe their appearance 
to each other, when the doctor was gone, 
telling them the probable length of time 
their wounds would keep them out of the 
war. I gave George six months' grace and he 
gave me five. We all gave the fellow with the 
shattered thigh one year. And there was a 
man, in the next bed to his, with a badly 
broken shin, to whom we gave the same 
time. These two were the most interesting 
surgical cases within range of my bed ; but 
there was another one up in the far corner, 
whom I could hear but not see, who appeared 
to have at least five holes in him, one of 
which was through the jaw. He was a 
Cambridge don, and evidently quite un- 
accustomed to keeping his mouth shut ; so 
he would talk unceasingly all day, through 



108 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

the clenched remnants of his teeth, and far 
into the night, for continual toothache kept 
him awake, and he had a great weakness for 
ghost stories, which he used to tell with the 
greatest imaginable effect in his present 
circumstances. 

The doctor was unable to give us any news, 
but Bob volunteered to go out and get some. 
He was a confirmed optimist, and, as we 
found out later, could never leave the tent 
for longer than half an hour without coming 
back with some delightful rumour. So when 
he returned from his search for news on this 
first morning we got the full blast of his 
optimism straight away. " One of the men 
off one of the battleships," he began, " is 
offering five to one on the Navy being 
through the Dardanelles in ten days. And 
he says one of his officers says that Achi 
Baba's fallen." 

But we had heard the Achi Baba news too 
often before, and I fear that the silence 
greeting his news must have offended Bob. 
However, he persevered : " And they say 
the Turks are suing for a separate peace." 
This we were more inclined to believe, as we 
had given them a nasty fright at Suvla Bay ; 
and, strangely enough, at that very moment 
we heard the unmistakable sound of cheers. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 109 

round upon round of cheers, as from a great 
multitude of men, floating over the water ; 
and, looking out of the tent door, I saw a 
fleet of transports steaming out of the har- 
bour, crammed from bows to stern, and half- 
way up the masts, with troops in khaki drill, 
who were waving their helmets and cheering 
as they glided out past each of the men-of- 
war, whose crews were cheering back; and 
then, as they were nearing the mouth of 
the harbour, a fresh cheer, of thinner volume, 
reached us from the distance, and we saw a 
huge white hospital ship passing the trans- 
ports on her way in, the " walking cases " 
crowding the decks to see the cheerful army 
setting out to avenge their wounds. Yes, 
perhaps the Turks would sue for a separate 
peace, if there were many more such liner- 
loads of men to follow ; and there were 
many of us who still believed that one more 
bayonet would break the Pasha's back. 

It was certainly very cheering to see those 
fresh troops setting out for Suvla Bay, for 
we knew that our casualties there had been 
prodigious during the last ten days, and that 
without reinforcements success was unat- 
tainable. And surely by now the water 
supply would be running smoothly, the 
rations going up like clockwork ; our men 



110 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

would by now be able to reply to the Turkish 
bombs with British bombs, instead of with 
stones and lumps of earth ; a few guns had 
been landed, and the shells must be accumu- 
lating. By now the ships must have the 
exact range of the Turkish trenches and 
batteries and entanglements. And the Turks 
must be worn out with the continuous heavy 
fighting of the last fortnight. Yes, with a 
new Army Corps we should, as the sailors 
were wagering so readily, have European 
Turkey quickly in our hands. 

Soon after the last cheers had died away, 
when the troopships were already dots in the 
blue distance, our orderlies got busy on the 
a Primus " stove, to make tea for our lunch — 
or, rather, midday dinner. But, try as they 
would, the " Primus " would not burn. " It 
must be that blooming kerosene ! " said 
Bob. (He really did say " blooming," and 
nothing worse, although he had been spend- 
ing twenty minutes on the stubborn stove in 
vain. For both he and Ralph were non- 
swearers, non- drinkers and non-smokers — 
the very opposite to the foolish idea of 
Colonial troops which the small but inevit- 
able number of bad-hats among their large 
and gallant contingent had managed to earn 
for them in Egypt.) " Yes, it must be that 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 111 

blooming kerosene. It gets worse and worse 
every day. Which bottle did you get it out 
of, Ralph ? " " Why, the one in the jam 
box," answered Ralph, and, pulling it forth, 
he took out the cork and smelt the inch or 
two of liquid remaining in the bottom of the 
bottle. 

A huge grin spread across his face, and he 
handed the bottle to Bob. " My word ! You 
are the hmit ! " said Bob. " That's the last 
drop of lime-juice we've got. We won't be 
able to get any more for a week," and he 
emptied the stove's tank into the sand out- 
side the tent. 

Such little scenes were always taking place 
in our little tent, and did much to amuse us. 

Dinner was much like breakfast, consisting 
of bully-beef, bread, tea and a liquid which 
we called " white- wash," but was really 
ground rice, sweetened by tins of goose- 
berries or pine-apple chunks, these latter 
luxuries being provided by the Red Cross 
Society. And once again I should like the 
subscribers to that fund to realise how great 
was the pleasure, out of all proportion to the 
expenditure, that their gifts gave to all of 
us who were wounded in Gallipoli. 

Being an "Ordinary" I could have as 
much to eat as I desired, and the sight of the 



112 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

pine-apple chunks restored my appetite, 
which had been worse than neghgible for the 
last three days, into the hunger of a starved 
wild beast. We all ate prodigiously. And 
who will now dare to say that cold bully-beef 
is unsuitable food for the severely wounded ? 
After dinner came that all-pervading 
silence that comes of excessive meals in an 
excessively hot climate, within an exces- 
sively stuffy tent. But only one or two of 
us were able to sleep. With the flies and the 
bandages and the heat and the impossibility 
of moving off one's back, sleep was hard to 
induce. So I got one of the orderlies to 
write a short letter for me to an aunt in 
Alexandria, who would cable the news of 
my safety home to England, and would send 
me cigarettes and things to read. Alex- 
andria was only two days' sail from Lemnos, 
and boats were passing to and fro inces- 
santly. But during all the five long weeks 
that I was there, not a letter nor a cable nor a 
parcel came through to me from home, from 
Egypt or from Suvla Bay ; nor did anyone 
else in my ward receive one except an 
Australian officer and the orderlies. For the 
mails came regularly enough from Australia, 
because it was so much farther away than 
England, I suppose. However, in November 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 113 

I received a cable sent off from home in 
August ; so perhaps if I Hve long enough I'll 
get an answer to that letter I sent to Egypt. 

But, of course, when we first came to 
Lemnos we did not know how regular the 
postal deliveries were; so were constantly 
longing for and even expecting a mail. So 
that great was the joy, on that first afternoon, 
when a man came into the tent with his arms 
full of letters, saying, " Well, here's a 
nice lot of letters for you, gentlemen ! " and 
threw them down in a pile on the table ; but, 
alas ! they were unposted letters, to be cen- 
sored, and we, being officers, were ordained 
the censors of them — the letters of all the 
sick and wounded in the camp. 

There were only about half a dozen of us 
that afternoon who were well enough to read 
them through, and only about two who could 
write. My arm being still nerveless, I made 
no attempt to do so, and was contemplating 
another more prolonged and more determined 
an effort to go to sleep, when a Greek voice 
broke in upon our ears, and a Greek strolled 
into the tent, with a huge bundle of the 
Times, They were of a date three weeks old 
or so, and cost fourpence each. But one or 
two of the least badly wounded still had a 
little money with them, and distributed 

H 



114 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

copies of the paper to all the rest of us. I 
read every word of that Times — all about 
mail-carts and false teeth and " Generals 
wanting places " (we could have added one 
or two), and things I'd never dreamed of 
before. But he was a scoundrel, that Greek ! 
He came in solemnly every afternoon, with 
his stale fourpenny papers ; and we found 
out that the papers only came out to him 
once a week. So that we always got a paper 
six days staler than we need have had, so 
that he could make two shillings a week extra 
on each of us ! Still, it gave us something to 
read. The parts about the theatres and 
music halls made us very home-sick, and we 
were green with envy at some little bits of 
news, such as " rain fell heavily in London 
yesterday," or " a party of wounded soldiers 
were entertained yesterday at the Empire, 
and afterwards taken to tea at " — somewhere 
or other that sounded very nice, or "a ! 
hospital ship arrived at Plymouth yesterday 
from the Near East." 

After what seemed an age (we lived 
entirely for our meals) came tea — eggs, jam 
sandwiches and arrowroot, with cocoa. We 
ate about half a loaf each, and I should not 
like to say how many flies ! 

The doctor came round once more towards 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 115 

dusk to dress the worst few eases and to be 
asked for news. But he was Scottish and 
very cautious, and we could get nothing out 
of him. So we regarded as oracular every 
word that fell from his lips — much as one 
used to do the infinitesimal communiques 
that came, at first, so sparingly from our 
armies in France. 

He did tell us, however, that evening that 
we should be sent on to England or to Egypt 
as soon as practicable ; whereupon we asked 
him which of us would be considered as 
qualifying for home. But we could get no 
information out of him on this point. 

When the doctor had gone Ralph went off 
to have a bathe (how we envied him !) and 
Bob waxed conversational. He first of all 
congratulated us on all being wounded. " I 
don't mind looking after men when they are 
wounded," he drawled ; " but it's the sick 
I don't like so much. Why, last winter this 
tent was full of pneumonias — every bed ! 
And there was a storm of wind and rain 
going on for two months without stopping. 
The tents came down on top of them 
altogether, once or twice in the night, and 
the whole camp had to turn up and fix them 
up again. They were a dratted nuisance, I 
can tell you. Very bad some of them ; but 

H2 



116 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

very few of them died. Then, of course, I 
had measles and small-pox and typhus to 
look after. But the small-pox was the worst 
of the lot. Simply awful ! But only a few 
of them died, too. Of course, the whole island 
gets green in the winter, as soon as the rain 
comes along" — which reminded him of the 
climate of Australia, upon which he expa- 
tiated in the most glowing terms, telling of 
apples and peaches as big as footballs ; of 
sheep and wool and corn and gold ; of men 
landing in Australia with twenty pounds and 
having twenty thousand in five years — in 
fact, a huge river of praise for that new 
country that made our mouths water. And 
soon Ralph came back, and we told him we 
had been hearing fairy tales about Bob's 
native land. " Oh ! Boh comes from a 
desert compared with Melbourne," he said 
at once, and then described his own par- 
ticular country in even more mellifluous 
terms. 

After that we used to listen to them for 
hours every day explaining the wonders of 
Australia, and the need they had of English- 
men to develop it, instead of those blasted 
Germans and the yellow races. They promised 
to " show us round " for a year or two 
" after the war," and "fix us up." They 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 117 

said that practically every Anzac in the 
contingent had made two or three pals 
among their comrades from the Mother 
Country, and arranged " to show them round 
after the war." And certainly it seems to me 
that nothing could be better for this Empire 
than if all these arrangements shall be carried 
out. The Australians certainly appeared to 
all of us to be a splendid lot of men : a brave, 
generous, large-hearted and patriotic race, 
and, above all things, as open and straight- 
forward as the day. 

The historical, economical, geographical 
and botanical survey of Australasia was cut 
short this evening by the entry of the night 
orderly, a tall man, who came in limping, and 
whose first words betrayed him as a Lanca- 
shireman. After receiving a few brief 
instructions from Bob, such as which of us 
were to have morphia injections, the pecu- 
liarities of the " Primus " stove, and where to 
find the deck chair to sit in, he took over his 
charge, and Bob and Ralph retired. 

The sun was getting low, and once more 
the little electric globe was lit and screened, 
at our request, by a towel fastened round it 
with safety pins. 

And then we heard a sound that reminded 
us of England, for most of us had not heard 



118 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

it since the days in camp at Basingstoke — 
the officers' mess bugle call. And we heard 
the doctors walking into the mess tent, which 
was just out of sight behind us. A little 
while afterwards we saw a tempting sight — 
a little roast turkey on a huge dish being 
carried past us into the mess ! We cheered it 
loudly as the triumphant cook marched past. 

Then the Cambridge don settled down to 
the telling of ghost stories through his broken 
jaws, and those of us who could dropped one 
by one to sleep. 

So ended our first day in the hospital tent 
at Mudros, in the Island of Lemnos. 



CHAPTER XII 

QUIET 

Perhaps the most monotonous time of our 
life in hospital was the night-time. For 
hours we would try to fall asleep, longing to 
be able to curl up on our sides and snore, as a 
Christian should. Later, a corporal would 
come in with a hypodermic squirt and inject 
morphia, which made but little difference. 
And then, perhaps, we would at last get to 
sleep, by beginning to count the flies on the 
tent roof or by watching the local Praying 
Mantis running to and fro about his meal. 
(I think that is his right name. He is a 
long, beetly creature, who kneels up and 
looks at the slumbering flies, and then, after 
selecting a good fat one, pops down and 
eats it.) 

Eventually we would wake up again and 
find we had been asleep for about ten 
minutes, and that what we had thought was 
the dawn was really the rising of the moon. 
One would then watch the gloomy vastness 
of the harbour, with its ghostly sentinels, 
and try to read the flash-light signals that 

119 



120 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

were twinkling all the time from mast to 
mast ; or see another hospital ship moving 
silently into the bay, with its green row of 
lights and its Red Crosses. Perhaps, too, 
some dim form would rise up out of bed and 
crawl laboriously to the foot of it, and sit 
down motionless by the hour, staring out 
into the night through the tent door. And 
all night long, in that curious island, we could 
hear the crowing of a cock in the distance, 
and, though I am not superstitious, I expect 
he was generally correct. And then, at last, 
seemingly long before the dawn, bugle call 
after bugle call down the French lines ; then 
the fading of the moonlight ; the faint light- 
ing up of the hills with the returning sun ; 
the Australian reveille call ; a whisper, here 
and there, in our own tent ; the shout of a 
wounded man awakening from a nightmare ; 
the yawns and stretchings of the convalescent 
night orderly ; the turning out of the sickly 
electric light ; and then the waking of the 
first few flies and the entry of Ralph, fresh, 
smiling and cheery as the risen sun. The 
night was over. 

Ralph was certainly a most remarkable 
person. He had lived for the greater part of 
his short life in the bush, taking up many 
occupations in turn, but always, apparently, 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 121 

had been a self-educated, self-appointed 
missionary among the very tough nuts who 
sometimes find their way eventually into the 
huge wildernesses of Australia. He had a 
passion for good literature and was, at the 
time of our stay in Lemnos, learning Tenny- 
son's " In Memoriam " by heart, having just 
finished Cromer's weighty volume on Egypt, 
which he lent me to read. It was a great 
pleasure to get hold of a solid book once 
more, for, with the exception of one or two 
Australian newspapers and the Times, there 
was nothing at all to read in the hospital. 

So in the afternoons, as soon as our lunch 
was over and the clatter of the cleaning of 
the mugs had died away, I used to read a 
few pages of Cromer's Egypt, to the accom- 
paniment of chunks of Athenian chocolate, 
very gritty, that was obtainable up at the 
Windmill, and even, occasionally, with a 
cigarette; for every Thursday there was an 
issue of a species of Gold Flake cigarettes all 
round the hospital, and these, though worse 
than any I had seen before, were inestimably 
better than none at all. One day, moreover, 
the men of the Fleet sent ashore an immense 
quantity of tobacco and cigarette papers as a 
present for distribution among the wounded. 

I think it was on that same day that we 



122 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

received a memorable visit from a Commis- 
sion sent out from England for the purpose 
of investigating the cause and cure of the 
dysentery that was making such havoc 
among all ranks in the Near East. Covered 
with red tabs and hat-bands, and loaded 
with glittering brass, they strutted down our 
ward — patently disgusted at the contrast 
it presented to the hospitals to which they 
were accustomed — and so out, and round 
the rest of the camp, a silent and somewhat 
critical cortege. Next morning we asked the 
doctor how the Commission was getting on. 
His answer to our innocent questions was a 
trifle curt, but one could detect the symptoms 
of a smile about his face as he replied, " It's 
all in bed with dysentery to-day." 

The treatment for dysentery, as practised 
on one or two of us in the ward, appeared to 
consist of almost absolute starvation, with a 
quantity of injections, of some kind, into the 
blood. We were told that when, after a 
fortnight or so, the patient became practi- 
cally transparent with hunger he would 
qualify for a bottle of champagne. But not 
one of the fellows in our ward managed to 
maintain the necessary symptoms for long 
enough to attain to this desirable standard, 
so we never heard the pleasing pop nor saw 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 123 

a single cork fly up to the roof among the 
flies, nor any tin mug foaming with cham- 
pagne. 

One night, however, I was given a particu- 
larly disagreeable medicine to swallow, and a 
little opium was mixed with it to pacify me. 
Almost as soon as I had gulped it down I 
fell into the most delicious sleep, the first 
good sleep I had enjoyed since being wounded, 
and in the course of this opiated slumber I 
dined for three hours at the " Carlton," with 
fizz and ices and strawberries and cigars. 
And ever after that night I was able to sleep, 
in darkness or in daylight, whenever I de- 
sired. I suppose my system must have for- 
gotten how to fall asleep, and then suddenly 
been reminded of it by the opium. Of 
course, on the next night everyone begged 
the doctor to be allowed to " dine at the 
Carlton," but he sternly refused. 

The Dysentery Commission were not the 
only visitors that we had the pleasure of 
seeing in our tent, though visitors were few 
enough and very far between. Perhaps the 
visit that cheered us up most of all was on the 
occasion of an inspection of the hospital by 
the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton. 
We heard about it the evening before it hap- 
pened, just after we had heard the news of 



124 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

the famous attack on the Anafarta hills, that 
had taken place on Saturday, August 21st, 
and of the enormous casualties we had suf- 
fered there. The first battalion of my own 
regiment had suffered particularly heavily. 
But, as our ward was full already, we had not 
got any of the wounded from that fight sent 
to us. 

The news of Sir Ian Hamilton's impending 
visit threw the orderlies into a great state of 
excitement, and early in the morning of the 
actual day the preparations for a reception 
worthy of the visitor began. Bob, particu- 
larly, was anxious to have the place looking 
clean. He concocted some mixture, which 
he called disinfectant, in an iron basin, and 
threw it in great splodges all over the sail- 
cloth floor. Then, with a broom, the floor 
was swept at intervals for the rest of the day. 
At first the presence of the pools of dis- 
infectant made the dust turn into a rich, 
reddish mud, but as the day wore on it 
became dust once more, and duly coated the 
coverlets of the beds. These, however, were 
shaken now and then, and the floor even- 
tually resumed its status quo. 

The next thing to be done was to arrange 
the jam box, and a barrel full of old socks, 
etc., right away under the table at the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 125 

corner of the tent. The table itself was 
washed, completely, twice, till the floor ran 
with soapsuds. The mugs and bowls were 
scrupulously cleaned, in two changes of 
water, and piled up in a pyramid at the far 
end of the table. The soot was scraped off 
the " Primus " stove, and two weedy little 
lemons (it was a great triumph to have 
procured any lemons at all) were placed in a 
conspicuous position on the nearer side of 
the table. 

In addition, as though to emphasise the 
reckless luxury in which we were living, Bob 
pinned up no less than six brand-new fly- 
papers on the tent poles, expressing the 
pious hope that the flies would keep off them 
and leave them clean till the General had 
left. But we cruelly organised a combined 
" drive " with the fly- whisks, making it 
impossible for the flies to rest their weary 
wings on any other spot than these fly- 
papers. So that by the time the General did 
arrive the papers themselves were no more 
to be seen. At the last moment. Bob, feeling 
that the pyramid of mugs and dishes, 
though fairly clean, was not exactly pleasing 
to the eye, covered up the entire table 
(except the lemons) with a spare counterpane 
surmounted by a huge Red Cross. 



126 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Sir Ian Hamilton spent a long time in the 
ward, speaking to each of us for some 
minutes. He appeared to be in the best of 
spirits, but to feel our losses most acutely. 
He told us, with a laugh, as he went out, 
that he had got some excellent news, which 
he would love to tell us, but he could not 
even tell his Chief of Staff. Altogether, his 
visit cheered us up like anything. He was 
most sympathetic with every type of wound 
and sickness ; indeed, there must be few of 
them which he himself had not experienced 
in the course of a military career to whose 
variety and extent his rows of ribbons bore 
ample testimony. 

As soon as he had passed into the next 
tent Bob and Ralph stood at ease. They 
said they always liked Sir Ian Hamilton's 
inspections, as he gave all his attention to 
the patients and did not waste any time by 
peering at the plates and peeping at the 
dust under the beds. 

The rest of us fell to wondering what the 
" good news " was. Had it got anything to 
do with the Bulgarians ? Or with the 
Greeks ? We all know better now. 

Bob considered that in all probability a 
hundred thousand Italian troops had landed 
to storm the Bulair lines with a dozen 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 127 

seventeen-inch guns. He had heard some of 
the sailors saying something about it. But 
when the doctor came that night he dis- 
missed the story with an indulgent smile. 

It must have been the day after the visit 
of the Commander-in-Chief that Bob made a 
memorable foraging expedition to one of the 
liners in the harbour. Hearing of his inten- 
tion, we loaded him with commissions, asking 
him to buy razors, strops, prunes, melons, 
turkeys, coffee, tongues, ham, and innumer- 
able other things. He came back, hot and 
tired, in the late evening, with about half a 
pound of melting butter wrapped up in a 
newspaper, two razors, four tins of sardines, 
and a tie-pin with a picture of the Mauretania 
on it : everything else had been sold out. 

I managed to secure one of the razors, and 
Bob, with the utmost magnanimity, pre- 
sented each of us with a slice of bread and 
butter. It was weeks and weeks since we had 
tasted butter, so the pleasure this feast gave 
us can perhaps be understood to have been 
enormous. What a time the Huns will have 
after the war ! 

The Mauretania tie-pin was destined for 
a friend at home in Australia, and brought 
in a box to one of us to censor. We censored 
almost as many parcels as letters in that 



128 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

camp; for the Australians were always 
sending home their souvenirs. Often I had 
four or five wooden boxes, beautifully and 
carefully constructed, laid upon my bed for 
censoring, each box containing a perfect 
specimen of an unexploded Turkish shell — 
rather difficult objects to censor unless you 
are an expert. However, their owners could 
usually be persuaded that shells invariably 
get lost in the post, and that they had better 
send them by any invalided friends who might 
in due course be returning to Australia. 

Perhaps the grimmest souvenir I have ever 
heard of was in an English soldier's pack, up 
at the hospital pack-store — namely, a Turk's 
skull, complete with a Fez cap ! 

It was now possible for me to join the 
happy band of censors, for though I could not 
yet move my right arm, except by carrying 
it about with my left, yet the fingers were 
beginning to work all right. Anyhow, 
censoring letters told me all the latest news 
from the Peninsula ; and some wonderful 
fairy stories, too, that would have made even 
an English evening paper blush. If the 
morale of troops can be judged by the tone 
of the letters of its wounded, there never was^ 
a cheerier army than that which fought upon 
Gallipoli. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 129 

With the possibihty of writing came the 
possibihty of shaving, too ; and I found that 
my new razor, though of German manufac- 
ture, made excellent practice on my beard 
of a morning. Under the circumstances, I 
could only clear an inch or so of the forest 
at a time, with rests between, so that shaving 
could be made to occupy a full hour every 
day ; which was no small thing, seeing that 
there was little chance else of passing time 
so quickly and so profitably. 

There were now four razors in the ward, 
which went the tour of the tent each day, 
Bob or Ralph doing the stropping between 
the rounds ; so all of us soon became quite 
respectable again. 

It was while shaving for the first time since 
being wounded that I suddenly became aware 
of strange and wonderful noises going on 
somewhere outside the tent — the noise of 
music and singing in the distance. Now we 
were used to hearing, every evening, from 
the hospital staff's recreation tent, the eternal 
thumping of a piano and the endless encores 
of shouted choruses ; but this was in the 
morning, in broad daylight, when all the 
staff was hard at work. What could it be ? 

Was I dreaming ? Could it be ? 

" There's a gramophone in this camp ! " I 



130 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

announced. We all listened. Yes ! There 
was undoubtedly a gramophone in the camp ! 
We sent out Bob to reconnoitre, with 
orders to locate the instrument, pounce upon 
it, and, if possible, to bring it back into our 
ward alive. He tiptoed out of the tent, and 
there followed a long pause, during which the 
indistinct sound of distant music continued. 
Suddenly the music stopped. Bob must 
have opened the attack. We awaited the 
result with confidence. 

Our confidence was fully justified ; in less 
than five minutes Bob staggered in with the 
gramophone and an armful of records. He 
placed them abruptly on the table, where 
the medicine bottles and squirts were kept, 
upsetting the only bottle of ink in the ward, 
and, winding up the gramophone, told us 
that it belonged to the doctors, who had got 
it to lend to the hospital. We could have 
it for the whole afternoon, and each ward was 
to have it for half a day after that. With 
these words he put on " When we wind up 
the Watch on the Rhine." Never had a 
gramophone given greater pleasure. Every 
record was played and encored over and over 
again, till the doctor came in, in the evening, 
and had the poor tired instrument carried 
away to bed. 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 131 

We then, after repeated and elaborate 
calculations, came to the conclusion that it 
would not be our turn to have the gramo- 
phone again for a fortnight, which sug- 
gested a suitable subject for a bet— whether 
we should ever hear it again or not ; for we 
were now afraid, some of us, that we should 
never leave that island till we were fit for 
active service once again, so long had we 
already been there, and so many hospital 
ships had steamed in and out again without 
embarking us. As a matter of fact we did 
outstay the fortnight, but never heard the 
gramophone again, because it had been 
broken in some other ward. So the bets were 
declared off. 

That gazing at the hospital ships as they 
came in and left again without us was very 
trying. Every time the familiar white-walled 
vessels showed their noses round the head- 
land at the harbour's mouth we felt that our 
turn must have come at last. There were 
about a hundred and twenty such comings 
andfgoings while we were at Lemnos, and in 
the end we left off watching them, unless 
Bob brought in some " absolutely reliable " 
report that we were sailing for England the 
next day— which he did about every other 
evening. 

12 



132 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Sometimes the signalling expert would 
announce the embarkation of so many- 
wounded on to such and such a boat next 
day, and thereby raise our hopes to fever 
pitch, only to be dashed to the depths 
again as, after a long day of anxious waiting, 
we would see a hospital ship steam out at 
dusk, give a smug hoot, and disappear round 
the corner of the island. But most of the 
signals were in a cipher of which we could 
make no sense at all. 

There was one great thing that the mono- 
tony and discomfort of the camp in Lemnos 
did for us — those who were going to get well 
at all did so with a remarkable rapidity. If 
one wanted something done, it was best 
to do it for oneself, and quickest, too. Take 
the shaving mentioned above as an example : 
it might take an hour to shave oneself, but it 
would have been a month before we could 
have lured the barber out of his lair, and the 
orderlies had too much else to do. 

It was not long, therefore, before I invented 
a means of getting out of bed, in spite of the 
broken leg and arm. True, for the first few 
days of my experiments in this direction I 
needed at first two and then one orderly to 
prop me up and give me confidence, as one 
does when one learns to ride a bicycle ; but 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 133 

after that, with the help of a broom, turned 
into a crutch with cotton wool and bandages 
where the hairs had been in its palmier days, 
and with some bands to support the useless 
limbs, I found I could progress, at the rate 
of nearly a yard a minute, sideways, on the 
toe and heel of my right foot. This, of 
course, was a very great advantage, for it is 
weary work to lie for ever on one's back ; and 
soon I found it possible to get outside the 
tent door and lie back for a few minutes in the 
deck chair, a pleasure in which I was now well 
enough to indulge twice a day — at dawn and 
at dusk, when the sun was low, and when, 
incidentally, the place was looking its very 
best and feeling its coolest. 

So of an evening four or five of us would 
lie out in a row, on anything we could scrape 
together in the shape of a chair, to watch the 
sun go down behind Mount Athos, and listen 
to the bugles, all over the island and upon 
the ships, blowing the officers' mess, and hear 
the scraps of the songs of the soldiers of many 
nations as they strolled about to bask in the 
peace of that short, cool hour of dusk. It is 
strange how they seemed with one accord to 
sing at that one time of day, especially the 
French troops in the camp below. Some- 
times we sang ourselves, generally " an- 



134 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

thems " — i.e., everyone simultaneously with 
his own words and tune. And soon it would 
grow chilly suddenly, and we would crawl 
back, at our leisure, to our beds again, 
which, with any luck, the incoming night 
orderly would have made up for us. 



CHAPTER XIII 

OUR SPIRITS ROSE 

So the days passed, gathering into weeks, 
and the weeks rolled by. There were but 
few changes in our little company. One day 
a captain was found to have enteric, and 
removed ; and we lost the major who had 
been wounded in the head. 

Just before dawn I had crept out of the 
tent, unable any longer to sleep, to the deck- 
chair that overlooked the harbour. And 
there, with pencil and paper, I began to 
make a rough sketch of the shipping in the 
bay ; longing for a paint-box with which to 
catch some of the fleeting colours of the 
sunrise on the hills beyond, and on the sea. 

But soon my arm and my head grew tired, 
and I fell asleep in the chair. The reveille 
bugle woke me up, and, feeling rather cold, 
I looked round for my crutch, to return to 
the tent. And then I saw, coming out of 
the tent. Bob and Ralph carrying one of 
the beds, with the sheet drawn up to the 
top. They passed me without a word and 
went on over the brow of the hill. 

When I got back to the ward the major's 
place was empty and everyone asleep. And, 

135 



136 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

being tired, I went to sleep myself. At 
breakfast that morning we learnt that the 
major would be buried later on in the day. 
We were all very sorry he had gone ; for 
though he had forgotten how to speak — 
" luck " being about the only word he could 
remember — he had seemed always very 
cheerful, and was a popular member of 
our little mess. The gap that the removal 
of his bed had made seemed very empty 
for a while, and our thoughts would keep 
running back to him as does the tongue to 
a newly-lost tooth. Only one of us was well 
enough to go to his burial. 

Some more of our party left us after a 
few days, to go to Alexandria or England — 
we did not know for certain which. One 
afternoon the major commanding the hospital 
had come into the ward and asked for six 
" walking cases " to be ready to go on board 
a hospital ship next day ; and, as I could now 
"walk" the best part of ten yards, I tried to 
get off with this lot myself; indeed, I would 
have given anything to go. But, though I 
volunteered and the major said " Oh, yes, of 
course ! " yet when the names of the lucky 
six were read out mine was not one of them. 
George, my neighbour, was more lucky, and 
I had the mortification of seeing him, next 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 137 

afternoon, hobbling out of the tent with 
the other five (which included the Cambridge 
don — so we should not even have any more 
ghost stories to cheer us up of an evening), 
and of watching them climb up into the 
ambulance and disappear, with many wav- 
ings and farewells and promises to take back 
messages to our people at home. 

And then their beds were filled up by 
Australians and New Zealanders, sick and 
wounded, and we settled down once more 
to the pessimistic belief that our turn would 
never come to sail home. For so rapidly 
were we improving and so fit were we begin- 
ning to feel after our recent condition, that 
we thought another month would see us 
back into the firing-line again — a strange 
mixture of optimism and pessimism, but 
strengthened by every fresh departure of 
a hospital ship, and every rumour of Bob's 
that came to naught, as day and night 
followed the last monotonous night and day. 
One incident especially helped us to banish 
all hope of going home to England for a rest. 

We were surprised one afternoon by the 
entry of one of my fellow-subalterns, clad 
in complete khaki drill clothes and helmet, 
who came limping into the ward to ask the 
orderly if any of his regiment were there. 



138 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Then he saw me and came and sat upon my 
bed (there being no room for chairs inside 
the tent), and told me he was going back 
next day to Suvla Bay. " I can't stand the 
convalescent camp in this awful spot," he 
said, " so I've got leave to return to the 
regiment to-morrow. Your quarters are 
palatial compared with the convalescent 
camp. Why, we had no table there till 
yesterday, and we haven't got a bench there 
yet. There's practically nothing to eat. 
One has to stand in a queue in the sun and 
be handed out a hunk of bread and a cup 
of tea. For God's sake give me something 
to eat ! I'm on ' light duty ' and I've been 
unloading ships from morn till night the 
last few days. Never done so much work 
in my life. You are lucky devils in here ! " 
— and he enviously surveyed our stuffy little* 
fly-blown tent and hungrily eyed the jam 
sandwiches the orderly was putting on the 
table amid a swarm of flies. We gave our 
visitor some tea and plenty to eat, after 
which he limped away again, loaded with 
messages to the regiment. If his visit made 
us more contented with our present lot, it 
made the future, the prospect of convales- 
cence, a gloomy one to look forward to. 
George's place in the bed next mine was 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 139 

filled by an Australian, with a poisoned arm 
and rheumatism all over him. It had 
started from a tiny scratch in his hand, but 
he had refused to leave his job, and con- 
sequently got poisoned and generally run 
down. Before landing at Anzac he had been 
in the Australian Navy, where the loss of 
his boat had put him out of his job ; and 
before that he had been a ship's captain 
in the South Seas. A queer fellow, who had 
neither written nor received a letter from a 
soul for many years, he was yet very good 
company, and had many a yarn with which 
to while away the time. 

Then there was a Staff officer in another 
of the vacant beds, who appeared to spend 
most of his time in the conduct of a spirited 
campaign against the local vermin, ably 
assisted and heartily sympathised with by 
Bob, who used now and then to undress 
completely in the ward, in the ardour of 
the chase after some particularly trouble- 
some and elusive flea. Apparently the sand 
about the tents was full of these creatures, 
who used to wander inside to get out of the 
dew or even of the rain. For, indeed, one 
day we had a great storm of thunder and 
wind and torrents of rain, several tents being 
bowled over completely by its ferocity. In 



140 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

a moment the whole island was transformed. 
Rivers ran in every direction round and 
through the tents, and the land assumed a 
thin green veil of momentary grass as the 
water poured over the hillside, that sprang 
up before our eyes like the colour running 
from a painter's brush. A dense fog of sand 
blown up by the gale hung over the harbour 
itself, blotting out all the ships and mingling 
the sea and earth and sky into one raging, 
drab-coloured mass. But the rain was the 
first we had seen for weeks, and the storm 
soon cleared away and the air grew cool and 
clear. This brief storm and these few transi- 
tory blades of grass brought in their train a 
flood of thoughts of England — England as it 
now would be, in the cool glory of autumn ; 
and thoughts of Ireland too, and the days 
of training we had spent there a year ago — 
days of hard work followed by quiet evenings 
in the subalterns' room of those Dublin 
barracks. And yet at the time we had 
thought those evenings and those days so 
unbearably dull that we had contemplated 
the wildest schemes for smuggling our- 
selves out to France. Could we really have 
thought those autumn evenings dull ? 
Why, we had had a pianola then ! We 
had only to press a button and lo ! cigarettes 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 141 

and drinks would appear ! We had only- 
had to stretch out our arms and we could 
get the evening paper ! The weather was 
cool enough there to need a fire ! No, those 
evenings were not dull ! But these in 
Lemnos ? Yet, even if we went back there 
to the Dublin barracks at this moment, 
there would be too many empty armchairs 
by the fire in that dreary subalterns' room. 
Strange voices would wish us " luck " over 
the Scotch-and-soda. How damnable the 
present is ! How glorious in retrospect ! 
And so I could only repeat mechanically to 
myself '' Forsan et haec olim ..." and 
meanwhile reflect that there would never 
come a period of life so dull that we should 
ever truthfully consider we had been for- 
tunate in Lemnos. 

It was at about this time that an ancient 
man from Egypt, with a huge, grinning mouth, 
took over from Bob and Ralph the job of 
emptying the two great refuse-tubs, that 
stood outside the door of the tent, each 
morning ; and as a reward he would be 
given a tin of plum-and-apple jam with half 
a loaf of bread. Whence it appeared obvious 
to us that, if there was jam to spare for the 
most menial toiler in the camp, there would 
be some to spare for other things ; and a 



142 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

great and simple scheme suggested itself to 
us. We got one of the orderlies to go by 
dusk, bearing tins of jam, into the French 
camp, for purposes of barter. We had a 
great desire to quaff a draught of the French- 
man's ration wine. 

So we crawled out and sat in a row, in 
the gloom of the evening, outside the tent, 
turning towards the French camp and the 
harbour, and waited for our emissary's 
return. After a long while he came up the 
hill, bearing his bucket full of rich-looking 
purple wine, that splashed up over the side 
on to the thirsty sand as he walked. We 
dipped our tin mugs into the dark depths 
and drew them out, brimming over with the 
precious liquid, and raised them, with a 
cheer, to our lips. . . . One sip was enough ! 
It was the flattest, filthiest fluid that ever 
passed the lips of man. Thereafter we ceased 
to grudge the poor Egyptian menial his 
daily bribe of plum-and-apple jam. 

The morning that followed the Night of 
the Distressful Drink was full of rumours. 
Bob had met a man, who had been speaking 
to a man, who had been visiting the 
Mauretania the day before while she was 
being coaled. And this man had been talk- 
ing to the steward, who had heard the 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 143 

quartermaster tell the purser that the 
Mauretania was leaving within three days 
for England with a cargo of sick and 
wounded, of whom four hundred were to 
be taken from the Australian hospitals. 
Moreover, the doctor himself, as he went 
the rounds of the ward after breakfast, 
openly admitted that " it was just possible 
that there might be something in what Bob 
said." Besides, the ship was obviously coal- 
ing, for we could plainly see a grimy collier 
tied up to her on either side. And, if one 
part of his tale was true, why not the 
rest? 

Our spirits rose. We began to bet about 
it. Next day the colliers were still there, it 
is true, but Bob announced that his rumour 
was now a certainty, but that the sailing 
had been postponed for one more day ; and 
at last, after two long days, the colliers were 
seen at dawn to have steamed clear of the 
Mauretania, and smoke was pouring from 
her funnels. When the doctor came in we 
asked him which of us were going. " None, 
as far as I know," he answered. " The 
Mauretania is returning to England empty, 
to be fitted up as a hospital ship. There 
are three submarines just outside the har- 
bour, waiting to catch her before she gets 



144 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

her Peace paint on." And, sure enough, at 
lunch-time the mighty ship was on the move, 
and by the time lunch was over she was out 
of sight. So there was nothing to do but 
say the grapes were sour ; and to add, in 
imitation of Homer, "It is better to lie on 
a camp-bed in a tent on Lemnos, than in a 
four-poster on a torpedoed Mauretania,'^ 

After this we ceased to listen to Bob's 
prophecies, but this did not prevent their 
being announced two or three times a day. 
We began to grow quite childishly bitter 
and cynical as the days wore on. Every- 
thing went on as usual — the man with the 
badly fractured thigh paid his usual visits 
to the operating theatre ; we ate our 
usual round of rations ; we read the Times 
as stale as usual ; as usual we were exaspe- 
rated by the flies ; and the man with the 
broken thigh would be carried back to bed, 
white and unconscious, and the usual heavy 
reek of chloroform would permeate the 
tent. Poor fellow ! the limb was rebroken 
and reset again and again. There appeared 
not to be the necessary appliances to hold 
it properly in place. The surgeons did all 
their work under the greatest disadvantages. 
Sometimes, for days together, when the 
hot wind was blowing off the land, it was 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 145 

impossible to keep the operating theatre 
clean, and the table itself from a continual 
covering of the dirty sand, which hung 
like a yellow fog in the air, and on such 
occasions any serious operation was out of 
the question. Tetanus, dysentery, typhoid, 
and even measles, were abroad ; and thou- 
sands of the men who entered the hospital 
suffering from mere wounds alone, fell 
victims of one or more of these on top of 
them. But in spite of all these draw- 
backs, and of our continual disappointments, 
we were very cheerful on the whole, espe- 
cially in the evenings, when one more day 
was done and the cooler hours of night were 
drawing on. There was, too, in our ward, a 
subaltern who enjoyed a great reputation 
for the funniness of his stories, and used to 
keep us by the hour in fits of Homeric 
laughter — albeit during the whole time he 
remained with us I only heard one story 
told right through, and that was not a 
funny one at all. But after the first few 
words of each tale he would break off and 
begin to laugh so loud and long, and so 
infectiously withal, that for the rest of it 
he could not speak, and we could not have 
listened if he had, so utterly worn out were 
we with laughter. In this way one story 



146 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

would last for several nights without becoming 
stale. 

At length I wrote a letter home, to tell 
them quite definitely not to expect me back 
this time, as I was getting well so rapidly 
that I should soon be moved into the con- 
valescent camp. I licked up the letter 
and franked it, and Bob had just taken it 
up the hill to the Orderly Room when our 
doctor came in and told us that next day 
the Aquitania would arrive, in her new 
hospital-ship garb, in Lemnos harbour ; 
and that, as soon as she was coaled, this 
Australian hospital would be evacuated, 
and the Aquitania would take all her 
patients home. Moreover, the Hospital had 
received orders to be ready to pack up and 
go back to the Gallipoli Peninsula one 
fortnight from that date. 

This news, coming as it did from our only 
reliable source of information, immensely 
impressed all but the most pessimistic of 
us, who argued the simplicity and the 
probability of our being moved across to the 
convalescent camp in the course of the 
aforesaid fortnight. But the majority of us 
were inclined to believe it, and would have 
been hugely cheered in consequence, if it 
had not been for the endless disappoint- 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 147 

ments we had endured already. So it was 
with a mild indifference, next morning, that 
we watched the gigantic Aquitania, a ship 
of forty-seven thousand tons, glide up 
majestically to her anchorage. She was 
a magnificent sight — being painted all over 
a dazzling white, with yellow masts and the 
four great smoke-stacks and the innumerable 
ventilators yellow, too — like the private 
yacht of a mighty, sybaritic god. 

The more we watched her, the more our 
hopes and our enthusiasm grew ; and the 
grimmer became the dread of never seeing 
her luxurious inside. She was even more 
desirable than the vanished Mauretania, 
and I believe that that night, as we watched 
her turn from white to gold, from gold to 
pink, from pink to mauve and finally fading 
into the darkness of the harbour, each one of 
us secretly felt almost sure that soon he 
would be racing home in her to England ; 
and the sight of her at dawn, with colliers 
made fast to either side, made up a great 
deal for the news that the porridge had run 
completely out, and that we were to be fed 
once more on bully-beef. 



k2 



CHAPTER XIV 

AT LAST ! 

All day long we watched the great leviathan, 
with the terrible dread that she would sail 
without us as the Mauretania had done a 
day or two before. We watched for signs of 
smoke coming out of her funnels. We 
watched for the least hint that either of the 
colliers was casting off from her huge sides, 
showing that she was coaled and therefore 
ready to sail. 

At about midday we saw the jBirst of the 
colliers move away, and again, in the late 
afternoon, the second followed suit. Five 
great black stains of coal dust were smeared 
up the white sides of the great ship, as 
though some god (with exceedingly dirty 
fingers) had set her down from heaven upon 
the sea. And then— oh ! horrors !— we saw 
smoke curling up from two of the four great 
funnels, and the ship herself swing slowly 
round and point down to the mouth of the 
harbour, and almost imperceptibly the 
Aquitania glided down the bay. 

Moans and groans arose among us. Shill- 

148 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 149 

ings in payment of the bets of the pessimists 
were passed from bed to bed, and a gloomy- 
silence fell upon the ward. 

The doctor came in a little later, and was 
met by a storm of bitter sarcasm. Then we 
accused him of being a false prophet and even 
of being an incurable optimist. " Why ? 
What's the matter ? " he asked. " You're 
going home in the Aquitania, and I've got 
to stay here." 

" The Aquitania's gone," we said. 

" Nonsense ! " said he. " They promised 
to take you this time." 

" They promised before," we retorted, 
" and will no doubt promise again." And 
another gloomy silence ensued, to be inter- 
rupted by the entry of Ralph, who looked 
from one to the other of our woeful faces in 
bewilderment. " What's up ? " he asked. 

Someone volunteered the explanation. 
" The Aquitania' s gone," he said. Ralph 
burst out laughing. " No, she isn't," he 
said ; " she's only moved lower down the 
harbour, so as to be able to slip out easier 
when she wants to." And, right enough, 
when we looked out once more, we could see 
our treasure at anchor once again, at the 
very mouth of the harbour. 

Next day, at dawn, we looked to see if she 



150 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

had given us the sHp during the night ; but 
she was there all right, and we began to grow 
almost confident. 

I spent a few hours then in attempting to 
dress with what clothes I could find left 
in my valise. Being now fantastically thin, 
I found there was no difficulty in slipping on 
all the clothes there were — i.e., a pair of 
riding breeches, a shirt, and a tunic. My 
boots had been roasted as hard as iron, so 
Bob found me a pair of slippers. He could 
not raise me a hat, but produced instead a 
woollen Balaclava sleeping helmet, which 
might keep some of the sun off my wound. 
For collar and tie I used a triangular 
bandage. 

Then my valise was packed. In it Ralph 
put four boxes of Turkish Delight that he had 
fetched from the Windmill, and which he 
advised me to say I had captured in a Turkish 
officer's dug-out. 

The walking cases were the first to leave 
the hospital. We saw them hobbling out of 
all the tents up to the motor ambulances, 
where they sat, waving and shouting to the 
friends they were leaving behind, until the 
ambulances disappeared over the brow of the 
hill. 

At last our turn came. Bob went round 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 151 

the ward with a pencil and paper and we all 
exchanged addresses, in case, as he said, the 
wish of his life was granted, and he might 
one day go to London. After this he made 
us a little speech of farewell, and apologies 
for any discomforts we might have had to 
put up with by reason of the remoteness of 
the camp from civilisation or of his own short 
temper. It is curious how the best-tem- 
pered people in the world imagine they are 
as fiery-tempered and unpleasant as the 
worst. 

The stretcher-bearers then came in, and I, 
being nearest to the door, was the first to be 
carried up to the ambulance. Four of us 
were put in, we waved good-bye to the ward, 
where we had speat five weeks, and off the 
motor started. 

For the first time, now, I could see the 
camp properly and the Greek " village " 
through which the dreadful road descended 
to the sea. Think of the smallest and the 
dirtiest possible village in Ireland; then 
imagine a place of equal size and architec- 
ture, but twice as dirty, and you will have an 
idea of the village by that Australian hospital 
in Lemnos. 

The road was a succession of pits and 
boulders, and the pain it gave us to be jolted 



152 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

over it once more was horrible. Still, we 
were going home ; so nothing mattered now. 

At the bottom of the squalid village the 
road ran back, round to the left, along the 
shore, out of which it had been bodily (and 
badly) blasted and dug away. Thence it 
led on to the wooden jetty. The motor went 
to the extreme end of this and stopped. 

More stretcher-bearers came forward and 
set me down on the plank pier in the shade 
of the motor ambulance. The scent of the 
sea so close and cool and the noise of the 
lapping of the water against the boats tied 
up alongside the jetty were deliciously 
soothing after our rough passage down from 
the camp. 

What should I see on the right-hand side 
of the jetty but the very same old motor- 
lighter that had taken me ashore, weeks ago, 
at Suvla Bay ! Her crew was different, but I 
knew her by her number and by the bullet 
scars upon her iron sides. 

While I was gazing at her reminiscently 
I was attracted by the sound of laughter to 
my left, and, looking round, I saw a most 
surprising spectacle. Half the Australian 
stretcher-bearers were divesting themselves 
of their already scanty attire and plunging 
off the jetty into the sea, under which they 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 153 

remained for several seconds, to reappear 
with their hands full of — playing cards ! 
Time after time they dived in and brought up 
pack after pack, as well as a number of odd 
cards. It appeared that a boat full of play- 
ing cards, destined by the Red Cross for the 
use of the ten thousand odd sick and wounded 
in Lemnos, had been upset at the very jetty 
a few days before, and now the whole sea- 
floor was shimmering with cards. At that 
moment an important-looking officer came 
striding along the pier and came up to the 
bashful orderlies. " Put these four cases 
back into the ambulance at once ! " he 
ordered them, and strode away. My heart 
sank. So the orders had been cancelled at 
the last moment ! And once more we 
should have to endure that terrible journey 
in the car ! 

After a scanty toilet the orderlies lifted me 
back on to my shelf in the car, and when the 
other three were in the driver jumped up into 
his seat, and we waited for orders to move 
off. 

Soon the officer returned. "Put these 
four cases aboard the hghter at once ! " he 
said, and went away once more. We grinned 
with pleasure as the orderlies carried us on 
board. My three companions they laid down 



154 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

on deck, but I was carried down into the 
hold. The hold was almost full already, and I 
noticed that I had been mistaken for a pri- 
vate soldier, so placed with them below. It 
was a fortunate mistake, for I thus got an 
opportunity of seeing two men out of my own 
platoon, one of whom, lying next me, I had 
previously heard, was dead. He looked as 
thin and as delicate as Venetian glass. His 
right leg had been cut off above the knee 
(which he proceeded proudly to show me) and 
he had contracted dysentery in hospital and 
almost died of it. For weeks tinned milk had 
been his diet, and finally champagne. How- 
ever, he seemed very cheery indeed, and it 
was altogether a very pleasant meeting. 

On the other side of me was a Maori 
infantryman, also without one leg. A man 
of colossal physique, but clearly in great pain. 

In front of me, beyond a few rows of 
stretchers, were the bows of the lighter, and 
across them was hung a filthy sail, behind the 
cover of which the crew, consisting of two or 
three oil-begrimed sailors, was cooking its tea. 
They had sardines, some bread and coffee, 
and gave us cigarettes all round. 

Soon the engines started, but this, ap- 
parently, was only " to make it harder " ; 
for we did not move off for nearly an hour 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 155 

afterwards. The engines shook the whole 
boat cruelly, and we were half hysterical 
with abuse and sweating with pain and the 
stuffiness of the hold by the time we started. 
But, once under way, the motion of the boat 
was easier. After a long while — for we were 
heavily laden and moving slowly enough — 
we came to a stop, and through the skylight 
we could see the stupendously tall sides of 
the Aquitania towering over us — tier upon 
tier of decks and portholes, and row upon 
row of faces. Cranes were rattling every- 
where, and footsteps began to sound inces- 
santly above us on the iron deck of the 
lighter, where the walking cases were shuffling 
towards the big ship's gangway. 

Over all the noise the lighter's engines 
clanked and shook us like jellies. After 
another hour of waiting we managed to get a 
complaint about them taken to the skipper, 
who promptly ordered them to be stopped. 
The relief was enormous, and gradually our 
nerves and tempers began to settle down. 

There followed a long and tedious period 
of waiting. We began to get very hungry 
as the sun set. The noise on the deck above 
our heads had ceased, all the wounded from 
there having, apparently, already gone on 
board. 



156 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

Suddenly the engines started again and we 
moved on, along the water-line of the Aqui- 
tania. It was then that we realised how huge 
a ship she was by the time it took to move 
along her entire length round to the crane 
that was to lift us aboard. 

It was quite dark, and the lamps were lit, 
when the crane let my cradle fall with a crash 
on to the deck, where a medical officer asked 
me whether I was surgical. Learning that I 
supposed I was, he gave some orders to the 
bearers, who took me off for a long walk, 
round decks, up and down endless corridors 
and staircases, till eventually they brought 
me up on to the topmost deck of all, right 
aft, and carried me through a large oak door 
into my new ward. 

If I had been a " walking case " I am sure 
I should have fallen down with amazement 
on entering this palatial ward. The con- 
trast with the stuffy, sandy little tent I had 
just left was almost unbearably acute; for 
I now found myself suddenly set down in an 
enormous hall, lit by huge brazen chandeliers 
of electric lights. A vast glass-covered 
dome rose up in the centre, and radiating 
from it were a number of transepts, them- 
selves large rooms, oak-panelled to the 
ceilings, with deeply carved armorial bear- 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 157 

ings running round the frieze. The windows, 
instead of being portholes, were large and 
square, set in frames of oak, just like the 
windows of some old country house. The 
floor, of polished oak, was covered with rows 
of large four-posted beds, spread with linen 
of a dazzling whiteness ; and as I looked 
about me to see where I was going to be put 
I heard ironical cheers proceeding from the 
right transept, and there I saw five of my 
late companions in the Lemnos tent lying 
luxuriously back against piles of soft and 
spotless pillows and smoking huge cigars. 
" Where on earth have you been all this 
time?" "Had a good swim?" "Here 
comes a Turkish prisoner," " You're just too 
late for dinner," etc., they shouted out. 

I was put into a bed in their corner and 
given a beautiful pair of pyjamas, and had 
scarcely got into bed before a neat little 
steward came bowing up and handed me a 
menu. Long and lovingly I gazed upon the 
list of delicacies, recalling foods of whose 
very existence I had forgotten, before I could 
choose my dinner — soup, fish, entree, joint, 
pudding and savoury— and we had never 
had any dinner at all while we had been on 
shore. 

The others told me they had had some 



158 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

champagne with their dinner, and I asked for 
some too. But the sister (yes ! there were 
nurses in this hospital) told me I could only- 
have that when specially ordered by the 
doctor, and then only two ounces at a time. 
So I had to do with a bottle of Neapolitan 
Lager beer, the most delicious drink, but 
which, unfortunately, after my long absti- 
nence, set my head singing as though I had 
been drinking wine for hours. 

Yes, that dinner was certainly excellent, 
and so was the cigar that followed it. We 
all felt suddenly a thousand times better 
than we had done for weeks, and almost 
ashamed to be in such luxury, especially 
when we thought of the ten thousand or so 
sick and wounded who were still grilling in 
the tents on shore. We did not move out 
of the harbour that night, and indeed, now 
that we were in such comfort, we were not so 
frantically anxious to leave Lemnos behind. 
After all, we had been a very happy family 
in our little hut, and there was something far 
more personal and friendly about those 
orderlies and doctors than there ever could 
be in a great hospital city like the Aquitania, 
with her population of over 4,000 sick and 
wounded, her huge staff of matrons and 
nurses, doctors, orderlies and stewards, and 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 159 

her crew. There, we had been friends; here, 
we were only numbers and cases. I was 
No. 31 and a G.S.W. (which means gunshot 
wound, for apparently doctors are unaware 
that rifles have superseded guns in war). 
Besides, there were too many strange faces 
in the ward, with just a faint suspicion of the 
" Yes, sir ; no, sir ; who the hell are you, 
sir ? " spirit ; of hair oil and of regimental 
swank. 

We survivors of the little Australian hut 
began to feel a trifle grimy and unfashion- 
able compared with the immaculateness of 
one or two of the " home for a rest cure " 
cases. 

We sent for the keeper of the barber's shop, 
to bring a selection of Aquitania souvenirs, 
and choosing a few highly glazed giant post- 
cards of the ship, and some knives and links 
with the ship engraved upon them, dis- 
patched them, with many messages, to Bob 
and Ralph by one of the Australians who had 
come on board to see off one of his wounded 
pals. We knew they would value them. 

All that evening, and far into the night, 
the work of embarking the wounded went on 
without a pause. A large hospital ship, once 
a P. & O. liner, came alongside to unload into 
us. We could just see the top of her funnels 



160 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

and her mast through the starboard window. 
She looked Hke a mere tug-boat beside the 
Aquitania. 

From my window, in the strong moonhght, 
I could see the broad deck outside covered 
with mattresses, on which lay rows and rows 
of wounded (it was quite warm outside, and 
much too warm in our ward). Just under- 
neath the window were a few Turkish 
prisoners, wounded, lying amongst our own 
men ; they looked supremely content, and 
were jabbering away to each other like 
children at the pantomime between the 
scenes. There was one rather upsetting case 
just there, a young Highlander, who was 
shouting and yelling, and had to be held 
down by four orderlies. In our part of the 
ward, too, there was a very serious case. 
Poor fellow, he had to be spread out upon 
two beds, suffering from half a dozen wounds, 
including a gash from a bayonet, delirious, 
blood-poisoned arm, and dysentery. Night 
and day doctors, nurses and orderlies 
attended him. Every dressing was like an 
operation ; and three nights running he was 
taken away for serious operations. The 
room reeked of chloroform. Whenever one 
awoke at night there was sure to be our 
tireless, at least sleepless, doctor busy at his 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 161 

bed, and generally one particular orderly, 
quite a boy, who, with his large, half-frigh- 
tened eyes full of sympathy, looked after him 
as gently as a woman. It was a great delight 
to us when after about a week the doctor 
told us that No. — was " out of danger " at 
last. It had been a terrific fight, and did a 
great deal to recall to me a sense of the value 
of hu man life, a sense which war seems to dull 
somcAvhat. 

Thei-e were only two other dangerous cases 
in this ward, who made a great noise, shout- 
ing and swearing, carrying on their battles 
in deliri um. After a while they died. 

The rest of us were very comfortable and 
happy. I found that by great efforts— having 
now obtained a proper crutch instead of a 
broom — it was possible for me to wriggle out 
on to the after deck. It took about 20 
minutes' work to get there, but it was quite 
worth while. Spacious and snowy white, the 
deck right aft was dotted with long chairs to 
lie in. In front, and towering above one, 
were the four gigantic yellow smoke-stacks, 
a.iid monster yellow ventilators, and row after 
row of life-boats ; while over all spread out 
the serene blue sky of the Mediterranean. 

Looking aft, one could see the creamy 
wake of the ship stretching away for miles, 



162 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

behind the fluttering ensign, too often, alas ! 
at half-mast. And generally the brass- 
coloured cliffs and hills of the mainland or of 
the islands were slipping past us,. and fading 
away, to right and left. 

There, on the deck, one would lie, in the 
bright sun and the cooling breeze, and the 
steward would bring round tea and ca>^es 
upon a little tray. I remember one after- 
noon particularly, when we rushed pas.t the 
three great prongs of Southern Greece . We 
could see the barren mountains risin(| sheer 
out of the water, and between them the wide 
valleys, with their villages, gleaming white, 
all dotted up the slopes and along the shore. 
We were quite close to land, and passed three 
large ships as we swung up to the right, round 
the corner of Greece. How slow and insig- 
nificant they seemed beside our fortj^-seven 
thousand tonner ! So we raced on, bt^tween 
clustering islands and long promontories. 
It felt like being driven by an expert taxi- 
driver across Piccadilly Circus — we twisted 
and turned and quickened and slowed down : 
every moment it seemed we should collide 
with a headland or run over an island ! 

Another beautiful scene was while passing 
up the Straits of Messina in the dusk — a 
delicate operation for so large a boat. Sicily 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 163 

and Italy were both looking their best that 
day, or perhaps their second best, for nothing 
could have exceeded the beauty of the Bay of 
Naples as we entered it late one afternoon. 
Vesuvius seemed to be sprinkled with gold 
dust, and the City of Naples itself, as we 
glided into the harbour, was almost hidden 
in a deep blue mist, with gleaming white and 
golden spires and roofs peeping above it here 
and there. Indeed, it looked like a picture 
of fairyland. 

We had put in at Naples for coal and water, 
and stayed there about 30 hours. The 
morning after our arrival some Neapolitans 
came on board to welcome us — beautiful 
Italian ladies first, and then, into our ward, 
came some Neapolitan Boy Scouts, with 
daggers hanging from their belts, carrying a 
stretcher laden to overflowing with the most 
exquisite masses of flowers — lilies and carna- 
tions, and many other kinds whose names I 
did not know. They came round the beds, 
and threw a handful on to each of them. Our 
thanks and our conversation were limited to 
gestures, to laughter and to smiles ; and soon 
they passed into the next ward. 

It was at Naples that the authorities 

arranged for cables to be sent by us to our 

people to warn them of our home-coming, at 

l2 



164 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

fourpence a word. One party of men on the 
deck outside had only managed to collect the 
money for their cables at the last moment, 
just as the ship was moving out of the har- 
bour. So they wrapped up the money in the 
paper, and threw it down to the little boat 
that was taking the telegrams ashore. But 
the bundle fell too short, and, coming undone, 
spilt all the money into the sea. Thereupon 
the men in the little boat, after many gesticu- 
lations and shouts, rowed up to the spot, 
collecting the scraps of paper and picking 
them up. Every one of those telegrams 
reached its destination. 

It was a great relief to us to have passed 
Malta, for rumour had it that we were to be 
left there. Now, there was only one more 
chance of not getting home after all, and that 
was that we had to call in at Gibraltar for 
orders. But we need not have been afraid. 
We reached Gibraltar early one morning, and 
only stopped there for ten minutes, being told 
to proceed at once to Southampton ! 

It was now nearing the end of September, 
and as we rushed through the Straits of 
Gibraltar the sky turned from a cloudless 
blue into a dull grey, and the sea assumed the 
deep grey-green of home waters in the 
autumn. The weather suddenly became 






SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 165 

cold, and the waves rose up with crests of 
foam. 

But the huge ship remained as steady as 
a rock. We all had our blankets put on 
our beds (for up till now the sheets alone had 
been too warm, day and night), realising 
with a shock that the summer was really over 
for us now, and settled down to read again. 
The ship had a good library on board, 
belonging to the Cunard Company, and there 
were in addition innumerable other books of 
lighter calibre, including some magazines 
that had been given us by the English resi- 
dents at Naples. 

On the second day in the Atlantic I 
was taken to the " picture palace " to be 
X-rayed. It was a long journey, and I was 
very sorry for the stretcher-bearers, as I must 
have put on about two stone in weight since 
leaving Lemnos. The picture palace — one 
of the eight on board — was on the " garden 
deck " — an elaborate affair with trellis- work 
and tubs of flowers all over it, designed, I 
presume, for American millionaires. How 
lost, how unimportant, they would have felt 
upon that deck now, when it was thick with 
wounded Englishmen ! In the picture palace 
the bearers left me in the stretcher on 
the floor, and I began to wonder how the two 



166 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

doctors would be able to lift me up alone on 
to the table, when suddenly one of them 
stooped down and picked me up hke a piece 
of paper, without an effort. He then pressed 
the button, and the sparks began to fly from 
the machine while he took photographs. 
There was something so funny about it that 
I could not keep from laughing, and my 
shaking blurred the first photograph ; so, 
for the rest, the second doctor leant upon me 
with all his might to keep me motionless. 
I nearly burst by the end of it ; but the 
results were good. The fractures of leg and 
arm were shown very clearly on the plates. 
They then took me back to bed again. 

A day or two later the colour of the sea 
became more and more distinctly English, 
and the Channel grew more and more densely 
crowded with merchant vessels and trans- 
ports ploughing their way to and fro. At 
last, in the afternoon, we saw the well-known 
glint of the sunlit Needles, and then the whole 
south coast of the Isle of Wight. Soon after- 
wards the old round forts came into view, 
rising up in the middle of the sea, and then 
the pathetic rusty line of ancient ironclads 
condemned to the ship-breakers' yards — the 
old familiar sailing yachts rounding the old 
red buoys, the pier at Ryde, the crowded 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 167 

front, and in the background, most wel- 
come sight of all, the bright green fields and 
the staid, dark clumps of elm trees standing 
round the cottages. 

We had slowed down considerably now, 
and a pinnace rushed up alongside us with 
orders for the skipper. Apparently we had 
missed the evening tide by minutes, and 
should have to anchor where we were until 
next day. 

It was a beautiful evening. There seemed 
more '' body " in the atmosphere at home 
than in the East. The sunset was more 
mellow, the horizon not so sharp, and, best 
of all, there was twilight. In the twilight we 
saw five aeroplanes wheeling and diving 
about over our heads, and torpedo-boat 
destroyers racing out upon some quest into 
the English Channel. And then the shores, 
on either side of us, faded away into the 
gathering darkness, as though falling peace- 
fully asleep, and we went back into the ward, 
some on stretchers and some on crutches, 
one by one, to go to sleep in the certainty 
that we should land in England the next day. 
When we woke up we found ourselves in 
dock already, and heard the whistle of the 
first train-load of wounded starting off. All 
day the scuttling of feet and the rattling of 



168 SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 

the cranes once more went on. One by one 
all my friends were taken off to their respec- 
tive trains ; and at last, at about four o'clock 
in the afternoon, I found myself being carried 
down the grand staircase of the Aquitania, 
flight after flight, till we reached the gangway 
to the wharf. And five minutes later I was 
lying in a comfortable bed in a long carriage 
with a dozen others, in the 23rd ambulance 
train to leave the ship, being offered choco- 
lates and cigarettes and soup and beef with 
Yorkshire pudding. 

Everyone knows the journey from South- 
ampton to London, and what a London 
hospital is like. So there is no need to 
describe them here. Suffice it to say that 
as I was being carried through the crowded 
London railway station to the ambulance I 
heard the first news of the beginning of the 
glorious victory of our troops at Loos, and I 
had the privilege of sharing the motor to the 
hospital with one of the first of the wounded 
to come home from that battle. He was wild 
with excitement and delight, and kept on 
repeating to himself aloud, " The guns and 
the cavalry are through ! The guns and the 
cavalry ! They're over the trenches ! " And 
as they took me up the steps and through the 
gates of the hospital I felt for the first time 



SUVLA BAY AND AFTER 169 

the forlornness of our own little struggle in 
Gallipoli, where, as in a nightmare, success 
and glory had danced before our eyes, only to 
turn to horror and regret as we stretched out 
our hands to grasp them. And then, as I got 
into bed, and heard around me laughter and 
happy voices, and outside the roar and the 
hoot of the traffic, as of old, in the street, it 
was as though I had returned from some 
travel in a land of dreams. What I had 
thought had been July and August and Sep- 
tember grew suddenly timeless and unreal. 
Those long, hot weeks of sheer enjoyment at 
Mitylene, those fierce, wild days of mad 
endeavour in Gallipoli, and the long, mono- 
tonous, comfortless weeks on the Isle of 
Lemnos — all seemed the folly of some other 
man's imagination. We were only linked 
with them by the ever real memory of our 
own dear dead. 



THE END. 



Printed in Great Britain (1916) 

by W. H. Sm:th & Son, The Arden Press. Stamford Street, 

London, S.E. 



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